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SELECT POEMS 



OF 



THOMAS GRAY, 



Edited, with Notes, 

BY 

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D., 

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

WITH ENGRAVINGS. 



* » i •» r 



*> -> > n a a o 



REVISED EDITION. 







NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



iw# copies rceceivea 



FEB 17 1904 

VCopyrigM Entry 



r 



ENGLISH CLASSICS. 

Edited by WM. J. ROLFE, Litt. D. 
Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume. 



Shakespeare's Works. 


The Merchant of Venice. 


Richard III. 


Othello. 


Henry VIII. 


Julius Caesar. 


King Lear. 


A Midsummer-Night's Dream. 


The Taming of the Shrew. 


Macbeth. 


' All 's Well that Ends Well. 


Hamlet. 


Coriolanus. 


Much Ado about Nothing. 


The Comedy of Errors. 


Romeo and Juliet. 


Cymbeline. 


As You Like It. 


Antony and Cleopatra. 


The Tempest. 


Measure for Measure. 


Twelfth Night. 
The- Winter's Tale. 


Merry Wives of Windsor. 


Love's Labour 's Lost. 


King John. 


Two Gentlemen of Verona. 


Richard II. 


Timon of Athens. 


Henry IV. Part I. 


Troilus and Cressida. 


Henry IV. Part II. 


Pericles, Prince of Tyre. 


Henry V. 


The Two Noble Kinsmen. 


Henry VI. Part I. 


Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, etc 


Henry VI. Part II. 


Sonnets. 


Henry VI. Part III. 


Titus Andronicus. 



GOLD^MTH«S SELBCtf £o€MS.«J Br©\?N1JCG'$ SELECT POEMS. 

G^ay^SeJ^eVt ^P$e/^» ! I Br©wni*s-g'« Select Dramas. 

^kNGR ?9EM9 ©F •JoVRS' MfL*I«ON. Mj&AULAy's LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. 

Wordsworth's Select Poems. 
.** e^-L'trgB^^T^TJE^ fIom^Aa^espeVr^s* Comedies. 

a " •* LA3bS*£E£LB«»£'hoV ^H^A^ESPEARE'| e TRAGEDIES. 

fc Edited* by WM. J. ROLFE, "litt. D. 
Illustrated. Cloth, 12mo, 50 cents per volume. 



Copyright, 1876, by Harper & Brothers. 
Copyright, 1904, by William J. Rolfe. 



Gray's Poems. 
W. P. 2 



EXTRACTS FROM PREFACE TO FIRST 

EDITION. 



Many editions of Gray have been published in the last fifty years, 
some of them very elegant, and some showing considerable editorial 
labor, but not one, so far as I am aware, critically exact either in text or 
in notes. No editor since Mathias (a.d. 1814) has given the 2d line of 
the Elegy as Gray wrote and printed it ; while Mathias's mispunctuation 
of the 123d line has been copied by his successors, almost without ex- 
ception. Other variations from the early editions are mentioned in the 
notes. 

It is a curious fact that the most accurate edition of Gray's collected 
poems is the editio princeps of 1768, printed under his own supervision. 
The first edition of the two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and 
The Bard (Strawberry-Hill, 1757), was printed with equal care, and the 
proofs were probably read by the poet. The text of the present edition 
has been collated, line by line, with that of these early editions, and in 
no instance have I adopted a later reading. All the MS. variations, and 
the various readings I have noted in the modern editions, are given in 
the notes. 

Pickering's edition of 1835, edited by Mitford, has been followed blindly 
in nearly all the more recent editions, and its many errors (see pp. 84 and 
105, foot-notes) have been faithfully reproduced. Even its blunders in the 
" indenting" of the lines in the corresponding stanzas of the two Pindaric 
odes, which any careful proof-reader ought to have corrected, have been 
copied again and again — as in the Boston (1853) reprint of Pickering, the 
pretty little edition of Bickers & Son (London, n. d.), the fac-simile of the 
latter printed at our University Press, Cambridge (1866), etc. 

Of former editions of Gray, the only one very fully annotated is Mit- 
ford's (Pickering, 1835), already mentioned. I have drawn freely from 
that, correcting many errors, and also from Wakefield's and Mason's 
editions, and from Hales's notes {Longer English Poems, London, 1872) 
on the Elegy and the Pindaric odes. To all this material many original 
notes and illustrations have been added. 

I have retained most of the "parallel passages" from the poets given 
by the editors, and have added others, without regard to the critics who 



vi PREFACE. 

have sneered at this kind of annotations. Whether Gray borrowed from 
the others, or the others from him, matters little ; very likely, in most in- 
stances, neither party was consciously the borrower. Gray, in his own 
notes, has acknowledged certain debts to other poets, and probably these 
were all that he was aware of. Some of these he contracted unwittingly 
(see what he says of one of them in a letter to Walpole, quoted in the 
note on the Ode on the Spring, 31), and the same may have been true of 
some apparently similar cases pointed out by modern editors. To me, 
however, the chief interest of these coincidences and resemblances of 
thought or expression is as studies in the " comparative anatomy " of 
poetry. The teacher will find them useful as pegs to hang questions 
upon, or texts for oral instruction. The pupil, or the young reader, who 
finds out who all these poets were, when they lived, what they wrote, etc., 
will have learned no small amount of English literary history. If he 
studies the quotations merely as illustrations of style and expression, or 
as examples of the poetic diction of various periods, he will have learned 
some lessons in the history and the use of his mother-tongue. 

The wood-cuts on pp. 9, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 50, 
and 61 are from Birket Foster's designs ; those on pp. 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 
and 38 are from the graceful drawings of "E.V.B." (the Hon. Mrs. Boyle); 
the rest are from various sources. 



NOTE TO REVISED EDITION. 

When I edited this book, ten years ago, I had to depend on others for 
the collation of the MSS. of the Elegy, except the Pembroke MS., of 
which I had Mathias's engraved fac-simile. The Egerton MS. was not 
so much as mentioned by any of the editors or critics up to that date ; 
and now that I am able to consult the photograph and the owner's re-. 
print of the Fraser MS. (see page 78, foot-note), I find that all former 
collations of that (not excepting Mr. Gosse's) are incomplete and inac- 
curate. I may safely claim that in the present volume the readings of 
both the Fraser and the Egerton MSS. are for the first time given fully 
and correctly. 

The notes on the other poems have also been carefully revised ; and 
here I have been indebted to Mr. Gosse for a few additional varice lectiones. 

For the correction of errors in Howitt's transcript of the inscriptions 
on Gray's monument (pages 18 and 19), I have to thank Mr. J. Willis 
Westlake, of the State Normal School, Millersville, Pa. 

Cambridge, Jan. 21, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY, by Robert Carruthers. . 9 

STOKE-POGIS, by William Howitt 16 

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.... 23 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 43 

On the Spring 45 

On the Death of a Favourite Cat 48 

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College 50 

The Progress of Poesy 55 

The Bard 61 

Hymn to Adversity 68 

NOTES 7i 

Appendix to Notes 138 

INDEX 145 




STOKE-POGIS CHURCH. 



THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 



By Robert Carruthers. 



Thomas Gray, the author of the celebrated Elegy written 
in a Country Churchyard, was born in Cornhill, London, De- 
cember 26, 1716. His father, Philip Gray, an exchange bro- 
ker and scrivener, was a wealthy and nominally respectable 
citizen, but he treated his family with brutal seventy and neg- 
lect, and the poet was altogether indebted for the advantages 
of a learned education to the affectionate care and industry 
of his mother, whose maiden name was Antrobus, and who, in 
conjunction with a maiden sister, kept a millinery shop. A 
brother of Mrs. Gray was assistant to the Master of Eton, and 
was also a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Under 
his protection the poet was educated at Eton, and from thence 
went to Peterhouse, attending college from 1734 to Septem- 



io THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 

ber, 1738. At Eton he had as contemporaries Richard West, 
son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Horace Walpole, 
son of the triumphant Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole. 
West died early in his 26th year, but his genius and virtues 
and his sorrows will forever live in the correspondence of 
his friend. In the spring of 1739, Gray was invited by 
Horace Walpole to accompany him as travelling companion 
in a tour through France and Italy. They made the usual 
route, and Gray wrote remarks on all he saw in Florence, 
Rome, Naples, etc. His observations on arts and antiqui- 
ties, and his sketches of foreign manners, evince his admir- 
able taste, learning, and discrimination. Since Milton, no 
such accomplished English traveller had visited those classic 
shores. In their journey through Dauphiny, Gray's attention 
was strongly arrested by the wild and picturesque site of the 
Grande Chartreuse, surrounded by its dense forest of beech 
and fir, its enormous precipices, cliffs, and cascades. He 
visited it a second time on his return, and in the album of 
the mountain convent he wrote his famous Alcaic Ode. At 
Reggio the travellers quarrelled and parted. Walpole took 
the whole blame on himself. He was fond of pleasure and 
amusements, "intoxicated by vanity, indulgence, and the in- 
solence of his situation as a prime minister's son " — his own 
confession — while Gray was studious, of a serious disposition, 
and independent spirit. The immediate cause of the rupture 
is said to have been Walpole's clandestinely opening, reading, 
and resealing a letter addressed to Gray, in which he expect- 
ed to find a confirmation of his suspicions that Gray had 
been writing unfavourably of him to some friends in England. 
A partial reconciliation was effected about three years after- 
wards by the intervention of a lady, and Walpole redeemed 
his youthful error by a life-long sincere admiration and re- 
spect for his friend. From Reggio Gray proceeded to Venice, 
and thence travelled homewards, attended by a laquais de 
voyage. He arrived in England in September, 1741, having 



THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. It 

been absent about two years and a half. His father died in 
November, and it was found that the poet's fortune would not 
enable him to prosecute the study of the law. He therefore 
retired to Cambridge, and fixed his residence at the univer- 
sity. There he continued for the remainder of his life, with 
the exception of about two years spent in London, when the 
treasures of the British Museum were thrown open. At Cam- 
bridge he had the range of noble libraries. His happiness 
consisted in study, and he perused with critical attention the 
Greek and Roman poets, philosophers, historians, and orators. 
Plato and the Anthologia he read and annotated with great 
care, as if for publication. He compiled tables of Greek 
chronology, added notes to Linnaeus and other naturalists, 
wrote geographical disquisitions on Strabo ; and, besides be- 
ing familiar with French and Italian literature, was a zealous 
archaeological student, and profoundly versed in architecture, 
botany, painting, and music. In all departments of human 
learning, except mathematics, he was a master. But it follows 
that one so studious, so critical, and so fastidious, could not 
be a voluminous writer. A few poems include all the orig- 
inal compositions of Gray — the quintessence, as it were, of 
thirty years of ceaseless study and contemplation, irradiated 
by bright and fitful gleams of inspiration. In 1742 Gray 
composed his Ode to Spring, his Ode on a Distant Prospect of 
Eton College, and his Ode to Adversity — productions which 
most readers of poetry can repeat from memory. He com- 
menced a didactic poem, On the Alliance of Education and 
Government, but wrote only about a hundred lines. Every 
reader must regret that this philosophical poem is but a frag- 
ment. It is in the style and measure of Dryden, of whom 
Gray was an ardent admirer and close student. His Elegy 
Written in a Country Churchyard was completed and published 
in 1751. In the form of a sixpenny brochure it circulated 
rapidly, four editions being exhausted the first year. This 
popularity surprised the poet. He said sarcastically that it 



12 THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 

was owing entirely to the subject, and that the public would 
have received it as well if it had been written in prose. The 
solemn and affecting nature of the poem, applicable to all 
ranks and classes, no doubt aided its sale ; it required high 
poetic sensibility and a cultivated taste to appreciate the rapid 
transitions, the figurative language, and lyrical magnificence 
of the odes ; but the elegy went home to all hearts ; while its 
musical harmony, originality, and pathetic train of sentiment 
and feeling render it one of the most perfect of English 
poems. No vicissitudes of taste or fashion have affected its 
popularity. When the original manuscript of the poem was 
lately (1854) offered for sale, it brought the almost incredible 
sum of ^131. The two great odes of Gray, The Progress of 
Poetry and The Bard^ were published in 1757, and were but 
coldly received. His name, however, stood high, and on the 
death of Cibber, the same year, he was offered the laureate- 
ship, which he wisely declined. He was ambitious, however, 
of obtaining the more congenial and dignified appointment 
of Professor of Modern History in the University of Cam- 
bridge, which fell vacant in 1762, and, by the advice of his 
friends, he made application to Lord Bute, but was unsuccess- 
ful. Lord Bute had designed it for the tutor of his son-in-law, 
Sir James Lowther. No one had heard of the tutor, but the 
Bute influence was all-prevailing. In 1765 Gray took a jour- 
ney into Scotland, penetrating as far north as Dunkeld and the 
Pass of Killiecrankie 3 and his account of his tour, in letters 
to his friends, is replete with interest and with touches of his 
peculiar humour and graphic description. One other poem 
proceeded from his pen. In 1768 the Professorship of Modern 
History was again vacant, and the Duke of Grafton bestowed 
it upon Gray. A sum of ^400 per annum was thus added to 
his income ; but his health was precarious — he had lost it, he 
said, just when he began to be easy in his circumstances. The 
nomination of the Duke of Grafton to the office of Chancel- 
lor of the University enabled Gray to acknowledge the favour 



THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 



n 



conferred on himself. He thought it better that gratitude 
should sing than expectation, and he honoured his grace's in- 
stallation with an ode. Such occasional productions are sel- 
dom happy ; but Gray preserved his poetic dignity and select 
beauty of expression. He made the founders of Cambridge, 
as Mr. Hallam has remarked, "pass before our eyes like 
shadows over a magic glass." When the ceremony of the 
installation was over, the poet-professor went on a tour to 
the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and few of the 
beauties of the lake-country, since so famous, escaped his ob- 
servation. This was to be his last excursion. While at din- 
ner one day in the college-hall he was seized with an attack 
of gout in his stomach, which resisted all the powers of med- 
icine, and proved fatal in less than a week. He died on the 
30th of July, i77i,and was buried, according to his own de- 
sire, beside the remains of his mother at Stoke-Pogis, near 
Slough, in Buckinghamshire, in a beautiful sequestered village 
churchyard that is supposed to have furnished the scene of 
his elegy.* The literary habits and personal peculiarities 

* A claim has been put up for the churchyard of Granchester, about 
two miles from Cambridge, the great bell of St. Mary's serving for the 
"curfew." But Stoke-Pogis is more likely to have been the spot, if any 
individual locality were indicated. The poet often visited the village, his 
aunt and mother residing there, and his aunt was interred in the church- 
yard of the place. Gray's epitaph on his mother is characterized not only 
by the tenderness with which he always regarded her memory, but by his 
style and cast of thought. It runs thus: "Beside her friend and sister 
here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother 
of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her. 
She died March 11, 1753, aged 72." She had lived to read the Elegy, 
which was perhaps an ample recompense for her maternal cares and af- 
fection. Mrs. Gray's will commences in a similar touching strain : " In 
the name of God, amen. This is the last will and desire of Dorothy Gray 
to her son Thomas Gray." [Cunningham's edit, of Johnson's Lives, .] 
They were all in all to each other. The father's cruelty and neglect, their 
straitened circumstances, the sacrifices made by the mother to maintain 
her son at the university, her pride in the talents and conduct of that son, 
and the increasing gratitude and affection of the latter, nursed in his scho- 



14 



THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 



of Gray are familiar to us from the numerous representa- 
tions and allusions of his friends. It is easy to fancy the 
recluse-poet sitting in his college-chambers in the old quad- 
rangle of Pembroke Hall. His windows are ornamented 
with mignonette and choice flowers in China vases, but out- 
side may be discerned some iron-work intended to be ser- 
viceable as a fire-escape, for he has a horror of fire. His 
furniture is neat and select ; his books, rather for use than 
show, are disposed around him. He has a harpsichord in 
the room. In the corner of one of the apartments is a trunk 
containing his deceased mother's dresses, carefully folded up 
and preserved. His fastidiousness, bordering upon effem- 
inacy, is visible in his gait and manner — in his handsome 
features and small, well-dressed person, especially when he 
walk^ abroad and sinks the author and hard student in " the 
gentleman who sometimes writes for his amusement." He 
writes always with a crow-quill, speaks slowly and senten- 
tiously, and shuns the crew of dissonant college revellers, 
who call him " a prig," and seek to annoy him. Long morn- 
ings of study, and nights feverish from ill-health, are spent in 
those chambers ; he is often listless and in low spirits ; yet 
his natural temper is not desponding, and he delights in em- 
ployment. He has always something to learn or to commu- 
nicate — some sally of humour or quiet stroke of satire for his 

lastic and cloistered solitude — these form an affecting but noble record 
in the history of genius. 

[One might infer from the above that Mrs. Gray was not "interred in 
the churchyard of the place," though the epitaph given immediately after 
shows that she was ; but the writer refers to the date of the Elegy. Gray 
in his will directed that he should be laid beside his mother : " First, I 
do desire that my body may be deposited in the vault, made by my dear 
mother in the churchyard of Stoke-Pogeis, near Slough in Buckingham- 
shire, by her remains, in a coffin of seasoned oak, neither lined nor cov- 
ered, and (unless it be inconvenient) I could wish that one of my executors 
may see me laid in the grave, and distribute among such honest and in- 
dustrious poor persons in said parish as he thinks fit, the sum of ten 
pounds in charity." — Ed.] 



THE LIFE OF THOMAS GRAY. 



15 



friends and correspondents — some note on natural history to 
enter in his journal — some passage of Plato to unfold and 
illustrate — some golden thought of classic inspiration to in- 
lay on his page — some bold image to tone down — some verse 
to retouch and harmonize. His life is on the whole innocent 
and happy, and a feeling of thankfulness to the Great Giver 
is breathed over all. 

Various editions of the collected works of Gray have been 
published. The first, including memoirs of his life and his 
correspondence, edited by his friend, the Rev. W. Mason, ap- 
peared in 1775. It has been often reprinted, and forms the 
groundwork of the editions by Mathias (1814) and Mitford 
(1816). Mr. Mitford, in 1843, published Gray's correspond- 
ence with the Rev. Norton Nicholls ; and in 1854 another 
collection of Gray's letters was published, edited also by Mr. 
Mitford. Every scrap of the poet's MSS. is eagerly sought 
after, and every year seems to add to his popularity as a poet 
and letter- writer.* 

In 1778 a monument to Gray was erected in Westminster 
Abbey by Mason, with the following inscription : 

No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns, 
To Britain let the nations homage pay ; 

She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, 
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray. 

The cenotaph afterwards erected in Stoke Park by Mr. 
Penn is described below. 

The frontispiece to this book is from the oil-painting for 
which Gray sat in the autumn of 1747 to John Giles Eck- 
hardt, and which was long in the gallery at Strawberry Hill. 

* To the editions of the complete works of Gray mentioned above 
should be added the excellent one in four volumes, prepared by Mr. 
Edmund Gosse (London, 1884). — Ed. 




WEST-END HOUSE. 



STOKE-POGIS. 



FROM HOWITT'S " HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE BRITISH 

POETS."* 

It is at Stoke-Pogis that we seek the most attractive ves- 
tiges of Gray. Here he used to spend his vacations, not only 
when a youth at Eton, but during the whole of his future life, 
while his mother and his aunts lived. Here it was that his 
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, his celebrated Elegy 
written in a Cowitry Churchyard, and his Long Story were not 
only written, but were mingled with the circumstances and 
all the tenderest feelings of his own life. 

* Harper's edition, vol. i. p. 314 foil. 



STOKE -POGIS. I7 

His mother and aunts lived at an old-fashioned house in 
a very retired spot at Stoke, called West-End. This house 
stood in a hollow, much screened by trees. A small stream 
ran through the garden, and it is said that Gray used to em- 
ploy himself when here much in this garden, and that many 
of the trees still remaining are of his planting. On one side 
of the house extended an upland field, which was planted 
round so as to give a charming retired walk \ and at the 
summit of the field was raised an artificial mound, and upon 
it was built a sort of arcade or summer-house, which gave full 
prospect of Windsor and Eton. Here Gray used to delight 
to sit ; here he was accustomed to read and write much ; and 
it is just the place to inspire the Ode on Eton College, which 
lay in the midst of its fine landscape, beautifully in view. 
The old house inhabited by Gray and his mother has just 
been pulled down, and replaced by an Elizabethan mansion 
by the present proprietor, Mr. Penn, of Stoke Park, just by.* 
The garden, of course, has shared in the change, and now 
stands gay with its fountain and its modern greenhouse, and, 
excepting for some fine trees, no longer reminds you of Gray. 
The woodland walk still remains round the adjoining field, 
and the summer-house on its summit, though now much 
cracked by time, and only held together by iron cramps. 
The trees are now so lofty that they completely obstruct the 
view, and shut out both Eton and Windsor. 

# * # # _ # * # # # 

Stoke Park is about a couple of miles from Slough. The 

« 

* This was written (or published, at least) in 1846 ; but Mitford, in the 
Life of Gray prefixed to the "Eton edition" of his Poems, published in 
1847, sa Y s •' "The house, which is now called West-End, lies in a secluded 
part of the parish, on the road to Fulmer. It has lately been much en- 
larged and adorned by its present proprietor [Mr. Penn], but the room 
called ' Gray's ' (distinguished by a small balcony) is still preserved; and 
a shady walk round an adjoining meadow, with a summer-house on the 
rising land, are still remembered as favourite places frequented by the 
poet."— Ed. 

B 



jS stoke- pogis. 

country is flat, but its monotony is broken up by the noble 
character and disposition of its woods. Near the house is a 
fine expanse of water, across which the eye falls on fine views, 
particularly to the south, of Windsor Castle, Cooper's Hill, 
and the Forest Woods. About three hundred yards from the 
north front of the house stands a column, sixty-eight feet high, 
bearing on the top a colossal statue of Sir Edward Coke, by 
Rosa. The woods of the park shut out the view of West-End 
House, Gray's occasional residence, but the space is open 
from the mansion across the park, so as to take in the view 
both of the church and of a monument erected by the late 
Mr. Penn to Gray. Alighting from the carriage at a lodge, 
we enter the park just at the monument. This is composed 
of fine freestone, and consists of a large sarcophagus, sup- 
ported on a square pedestal, with inscriptions on each side. 
Three of them are selected from the Ode on Eton College and 
the Elegy. They are : 

Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; 

Now drooping, woeful -wan, like one forlorn, 
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, 
Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree ; 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. 

The second is from the Ode: 

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 

That crown the watery glade !* 
Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 

Ah, fields belov'd in vain ! 
Where once my careless childhood stray'd, 

A stranger yet to pain ! 

* The eight lines that follow in the poem are not in the inscription, 
though Howitt gives them. — Ed, 



STOKE- POG/S. 1Q 

I feel the gales that from ye blow, 
A momentary bliss bestow. 

The third is again from the Elegy: 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep 

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 

The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed 

The fourth bears this inscription : 

This Monument, in honour of 

Thomas Gray, 

Was erected A.D. 1799, 

Among the scenes 

Celebrated by that great Lyric and Elegiac Poet 

He died July 31, 1771, 

And lies unnoted in the Church-yard adjoining, 

Under the Tomb-stone on which he piously 

And pathetically recorded the interment 

Of his Aunt and lamented Mother. 



This monument is in a neatly kept garden-like enclosure, 
with a winding walk approaching from the shade of the 
neighbouring trees. To the right, across the park, at some 
little distance, backed by fine trees, stands the rural little 
church and churchyard where Gray wrote his Elegy, and 
where he lies. As you walk on to this, the mansion closes 
the distant view between the woods with fine effect. The 
church has often been engraved, and is therefore tolerably 
familiar to the general reader. It consists of two barn-like 
structures, with tall roofs, set side by side, and the tower and 



20 STOKE-POGIS. 

finely tapered spire rising above them at the northwest cor- 
ner. The church is thickly hung with ivy, where 

" The moping owl may to the moon complain 
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
Molest her ancient, solitary reign." 

The structure is as simple and old-fashioned, both without 
and within, as any village church can well be. No village, 
however, is to be seen. Stoke consists chiefly of scattered 
houses, and this is now in the midst of the park. In the 
churchyard, 

" Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." 

All this is quite literal ; and the tomb of the poet himself, 
near the southeast window, completes the impression of the 
scene. It is a plain brick altar tomb, covered with a blue 
slate slab, and, besides his own ashes, contains those of his 
mother and aunt. On the slab are inscribed the following 
lines by Gray himself: "In the vault beneath are deposited, 
in hope of a joyful resurrection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. 
She died unmarried, Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same 
pious confidence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the 
remains of Dorothy Gray, widow ; the careful, tender mother 
of many children, one of who^m alone had the misfortune to 
survive her. She died, March n, 1753, aged LXXII." 

No testimony of the interment of Gray in the same tomb 
was inscribed anywhere till Mr. Penn, in 1799, erected the 
monument already mentioned, and placed a small slab in the 
wall, under the window, opposite to the tomb itself, recording 
the fact of Gray's burial there. The whole scene is well worthy 
of a summer day's stroll, especially for such as, pent in the 
metropolis, know how to enjoy the quiet freshness of the coun- 
try and the associations of poetry and the past. 




gray's monument, stoke park. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY 
CHURCHYARD. 




•^ft*. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY 
CHURCHYARD. 



The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 

The plowman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 



26 



THOMAS GRAY. 



Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds : 




^GwekW-/-^ 



Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, 
The moping owl does to the moon complain 

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



27 




w *wA^gvsta*' 



Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 



THOMAS GRAY. 




*.•*&•& 



The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowlv bed. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



29 




For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 



3o 



THOMAS GRAY. 







Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: 

How jocund did they drive their team afield! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke \ 



25 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



31 




Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 



30 



32 THOMAS GRAY. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp ot power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 



35 



Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise ; 

Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 4c 



Can stoned urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust ? 

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? 



Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 45 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre : 



But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll; 

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



33 




Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
C 



55 



34 



THOMAS GRAY. 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood, 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. 







Th' applause of listening senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

And read their history in a nation's eyes, 



Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd; 

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD, 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 



35 



7° 




Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never iearn'd to stray; 

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 



75 



36 



THOMAS GRAY. 



Yet even these bones from insult to protect, 

Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, 

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. &, 




Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse, 

The place of fame and elegy supply; 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



37 




For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ? 



85 



38 THOMAS GRAY. 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 

Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, 
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. 



QO 




For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, 

If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, 



95 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



39 




Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 



4o 



THOMAS GRAY 



?ftr 




"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; 

Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, 
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 



4i 

105 



"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, 
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; 

Another came; nor yet beside the fill, 

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; 




-~H~a^ r»> < 



"The next, with dirges due in sad array, 

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. 
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 

Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 



"5 



42 



THOMAS GRAY. 



THE EPITAPH. 



Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth 
A youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown; 

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. 



Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heaven did a recompense as largely send; 

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear; 

He gain'cl from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend, 



No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 



125 




fa*s9pa£r^r 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 




ON THE SPRING. 



Lo ! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours. 

Fair Venus' train, appear, 
Disclose the long-expecting flowers, 

And wake the purple year ! 
The Attic warbler pours her throat, 

Responsive to the cuckoo's note, 



4 6 THOMAS GRAY. 

The untaught harmony of spring ; 
While, whispering pleasure as they fly, 
Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky 

Their gather'd fragrance fling. 



Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch 

A broader browner shade, 
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech 

O'ercanopies the glade, 
Beside some water's rushy brink 15 

With me the Muse shall sit, and think 

(At ease reclin'd in rustic state) 
How vain the ardour of the crowd, 
How low, how little are the proud, 

How indigent the great ! 20 



Still is the toiling hand of Care ; 

The panting herds repose : 
Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air 

The busy murmur glows ! 
The insect youth are on the wing, 25 

Eager to taste the honied spring, 

And float amid the liquid noon : 
Some lightly o'er the current skim. 
Some show their gayly-gilded trim 

Quick-glancing to the sun. 30 



To Contemplation's sober eye 

Such is the race of Man ; 
And they that creep, and they that fly, 

Shall end where they began. 



ON THE SPRING. ^ 

Alike the busy and the gay 35 

But flutter thro' life's little day, 

In Fortune's varying colours drest : 
Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance, 
Or chilPd by age, their airy dance 

They leave, in dust to rest. 4 o 



Methinks I hear in accents low 

The sportive kind reply : 
Poor moralist ! and what art thou ? 

A solitary fly ! 
Thy joys no glittering female meets, 45 

No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, 

No painted plumage to display : 
On hasty wings thy youth is flown ; 
Tny sun is set. thy spring is gone— 

We frolic while 'tis May. 50 





ON THE 
DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT 

Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, 

'Twas on a lofty vase's side, 
Where China's gayest art had dyed 

The azure flowers that blow; 
Demurest of the tabby kind r 
The pensive Selima, reclin'd, 5 

Gaz'd on the lake below. 

Her conscious tail her joy declar'd : 
The fair round face, the snowy beard, 

The velvet of her paws, 
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, 10 

Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, 

She saw; and purr'd applause. 



ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT 49 

Still had she gaz'd ; but midst the tide 
Two angel forms were seen to glide, 

The Genii of the stream : 15 

Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue 
Through richest purple to the view 

Betray'd a golden gleam. 

The hapless nymph with wonder saw : 

A whisker first, and then a claw, 20 

With many an ardent wish, 
She stretch'd in vain to reach the prize. 
What female heart can gold despise ? 

What Cat's averse to fish ? 

Presumptuous maid ! with looks intent 25 

Again she stretch'd, again she bent, 

Nor knew the gulf between. 
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smil'd.) 
1 he slippery verge her feet beguil'd, 

She tumbled headlong in. 30 

Eight times emerging from the flood, 
She mew'd to every watery God, 

Some speedy aid to send. 
No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirr'd : 
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard. 35 

A favourite has no friend ! 

From hence, ye beauties, undeceiv'd, 
Know, one false step is ne'er retriev'd., 

And be with caution bold. 
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes 40 

And heedless hearts is lawful prize, 

Nor all that glisters gold. 
D 




ON A DISTANT 
PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE 

"AvOpwrros, inavh irpocpacts eh to bvarvxetv.— MENANDER. 

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 

That crown the watery glade, 
Where grateful Science still adores 

Her Henry's holy shade ; 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 



51 



And ye, that from the stately brow 5 

Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below 

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey. 
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 

His silver-winding way : 10 

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 

Ah, fields belov'd in vain ! 
Where once my careless childhood stray'd, 

A stranger yet to pain ! 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 15 

A momentary bliss bestow, 

As, waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring. 20 

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen 

Full many a sprightly race 
Disporting on thy margent green 

The paths of pleasure trace ; 
Who foremost now delight to cleave >$ 

With pliant arm thy glassy wave ? 

The captive linnet which enhrall? 
What idle progeny succeed 
To chase the rolling circle's speed, 

Or urge the flying ball ? ao 

While some, on earnest business bent, 

Their murmuring labours ply 
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint 

To sweeten liberty, 



53 



THOMAS GRAY. 

Some bold adventurers disdain 3$ 

The limits of their little reign, 

And unknown regions dare descry ; 
Still as they run they look behind, 
They hear a voice in every wind, 

And snatch a fearful joy. 4c 



Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed, 

Less pleasing when possest; 
The tear forgot as soon as shed, 

The sunshine of the breast : 
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue, 45 

Wild wit, invention ever new, 

And lively cheer of vigour born; 
The thoughtless day, the easy night, 
The spirits pure, the slumbers light, 

That fly th' approach of morn. 50 

Alas ! regardless of their doom, 

The little victims play; 
No sense have they of ills to come. 

No care beyond to-day : 
Yet see how all around 'em wait 55 

The ministers of human fate, 

And black Misfortune's baleful train ! 
Ah, show them where in ambush stand 
To seize their prey the murtherous band ! 

Ah, tell them, they are men ! 60 

These shall the fury Passions tear, 

The vultures of the mind, 
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, 

And Shame that skulks behind; 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 53 

Or pining Love shall waste their youth, 65 

Or Jealousy with rankling tooth, 

That inly gnaws the secret heart; 
And Envy wan, and faded Care, 
Grim-visag'd comfortless Despair, 

And Sorrow's piercing dart. 70 



Ambition this shall tempt to rise, 

Then whirl the wretch from high, 
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice, 

And grinning Infamy. 
The stings of Falsehood those shall try. 75 

And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye, 

That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow; 
And keen Remorse, with blood defiTd, 
And moody Madness laughing wild 

Amid severest woe. 80 



Lo ! in the vale of years beneath 

A grisly troop are seen, 
The painful family of Death, 

More hideous than their queen : 
This racks the joints, this fires the veins, ** 

That every labouring sinew strains, 

Those in the deeper vitals rage : 
Lo ! Poverty, to fill the band, 
That numbs the soul with icy hand, 

And slow-consuming Age. s° 

To each his sufferings : all are men, 

Condemn'd alike to groan; 
The tender for another's pain, 

Th' unfeeling for his own. 



54 



THOMAS GRAY. 

Yet, ah ! why should they know their fate, 
Since sorrow never comes too late, 

And happiness too swiftly flies ? 
Thought would destroy their paradise. 
No more; — where ignorance is bliss, 

Tis folly to be wise. 



95 



xeo 




SEAL OF ETON COLLEGE. 




APOLLO CITHARCEDUS. FROM THE VATICAN. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY, 

A Pindaric Ode. 

4>a)vavTa auveToHcriv ' er 
Ae to itav ep/J-riveaiv 
XaTi£e*. — Pindar, OL el 

I. I. 

Awake, ^Eolian lyre, awake, 
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. 
From Helicon's harmonious springs 

A thousand rills their mazy progress take : 
The laughing flowers that lound them blow. 
Drink life and fragrance as they flow. 
Now the rich stream of music winds along, 
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, 
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign : 
Now rolling down the steep amain, 
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour ; 
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar. 



56 



THOMAS GRAY. 



I. 2. 

Oh ! Sovereign of the willing soul, 
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, 
Enchanting shell ! the sullen Cares i 5 

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. 
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War 
Has curb'd the fury of his car, 
And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command. 
Perching on the sceptred hand 20 

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king 
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing: 
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie 
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye. 



1.3. 
Thee the voice, the dance, obey, 25 

Temper'd to thy warbled lay. 
O'er Idalia's velvet-green 
The rosy-crowned Loves are seen 
On Cytherea's day 

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures, 30 

Frisking light in frolic measures; 
Now pursuing, now retreating, 

Now in circling troops they meet : 
To brisk notes in cadence beating, 

Glance their many-twinkling feet. 35 

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare : 

Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay. 
With arms sublime, that float upon the air, 

In gliding state she wins her easy way : 
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move 40 

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



57 



II. I. 

Man's feeble race what ills await ! 
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, 
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, 

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate ! 45 

The fond complaint, my song, disprove, 
And justify the laws of Jove. 
Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse ? 
Night and all her sickly dews, 

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, 50 

He gives to range the dreary sky ; 
Till down the eastern cliffs afar 
Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war. 



11. 2. 

In climes beyond the solar road, 
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, 55 

The Muse has broke the twilight gloom 

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. 
And oft, beneath the odorous shade 
Of Chili's boundless forests laid, 

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, 60 

In loose numbers wildly sweet, 
Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves. 
Her track, where'er the Goddess roves, 
Glory pursue, and generous Shame, 
Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame. 65 



II. 3. 

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, 
Isles, that crown th' ^Egean deep, 



58 



THOMAS GRAY. 




DELPHI AND MOUNT PARNASSUS. 



Fields, that cool Ilissus laves, 

Or where Maeander's amber waves 

In lingering labyrinths creep, 

How do your tuneful echoes languish, 

Mute, but to the voice of anguish ! 

Where each old poetic mountain 

Inspiration breath'd around ; 
Every shade and hallow'd fountain 

Murmur'd deep a solemn sound : 
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, 

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. 
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, 

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, 
They sought, O Albion ! next thy sea-encircled coast. 



70 



75 



80 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



59 



III. I. 

Far from the sun and summer gale, 
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, 
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 

To him the mighty mother did unveil 
Her awful face : the dauntless child 
Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiPd. 
"This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear 
Richly paint the vernal year : 
Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy ! 
This can unlock the gates of joy; 
Of horror that, and thrilling fears, 
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." 



85 



90 




THE AVON AND STRATFORD CHURCH. 



6o THOMAS GRAY. 



ill. 2. 

Nor second He, that rode sublime 95 

Upon the seraph wings of Ecstasy, 
The secrets of th' abyss to spy. 

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time : 
The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
Where angels tremble while they gaze, 100 

He saw ; but, blasted with excess of light, 
Clos'd his eyes in endless night. 
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, 
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 

Two coursers of ethereal race, . 105 

With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace. 



in. 3. 

Hark, his hands the lyre explore ! 

Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er 

Scatters from her pictur'd urn 

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn no 

But ah ! 'tis heard no more 

Oh ! lyre divine, what daring spirit 
Wakes thee now 7 ? Tho' he inherit 
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, 

That the Theban eagle bear, us 

Sailing with supreme dominion 

Thro' the azure deep of air, 
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run 

Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray 
With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun : 120 

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way 
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, 
Beneath the Good how far — but far above the Great. 




THE BARD. 

A Pindaric Ode. 



I. I. 

" Ruin seize thee, ruthless King ! 

Confusion on thy banners wait; 
Tho' fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, 

They mock the air with idle state. 
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail, 
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail 



62 THOMAS GRAY. 

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, 
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears I" 

Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride 
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, 10 

As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side 
He wound with toilsome march his long array. 
Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance : 
" To arms !" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quivering 
lance. 



I. 2. 

On a rock whose haughty brow 15 

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, 

Rob'd in the sable garb of woe, 
With haggard eyes the poet stood 
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair 

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air), 20 

And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, 
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre. 
" Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave, 

Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath ! 
O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave, 25 

Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe; 
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal clay, 
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay. 



1.3. 

" Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, 

That hush'd the stormy main ; 
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed ; 

Mountains, ye mourn in vain 

Modred, whose magic song 
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. 



THE BARD. 



63 



On dreary Arvon's shore they lie, 35 

Smear'd with gore, and ghastly pale : 
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail ; 

The famish'd eagle screams, and passes by. 
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, 

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, 40 

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, 

Ye died amidst your dying country's cries — 
No more I weep. They do not sleep. 

On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, 
I see them sit, they linger yet, 4S 

Avengers of their native land: 
With me in dreadful harmony they join, 
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line. 



11. 1. 

" Weave the warp, and weave the woof, 

The winding-sheet of Edward's race. 50 

Give ample room, and verge enough 

The characters of hell to trace. 
Mark the year, and mark the night, 
When Severn shall reecho with affright 
The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, 55 
Shrieks of an agonizing king ! 

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, 
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, 

From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs 
The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait! 60 
Amazement in his van, with Flight combin'd, 
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind. 

11. 2. 

" Mighty victor, mighty lord ! 
Low on his funeral couch he lies ! 



64 THOMAS GRAY. 

No pitying heart, no eye, afford . 

A tear to grace his obsequies. 
Is the sable warrior fled ? 
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. 
The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born ? 
Gone to salute the rising morn. 7 o 

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm 
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ; 

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; 
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 75 

That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey. 



11. 3. 

" Fill high the sparkling bowl, 

The rich repast prepare ; 
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast . 

Close by the regal chair 80 

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl 
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. 

Heard ye the din of battle bray, 
Lance to lance, and horse to horse ? 
Long years of havoc urge their destined course, 85 

And thro' the kindred squadrons mow their way. 
Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, 

With many a foul and midnight murther fed, 
Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, 

And spare the meek usurper's holy head. 90 

Above, below, the rose of snow, 

Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread : 
The bristled boar in infant gore 

Wallows beneath the thorny shade. 
Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, 95 

Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. 



THE BARD. 



65 




THE BLOODY TOWER. 



III. I. 

" Edward, lo ! to sudden fate 

(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.) 
Half of thy heart we consecrate. 

(The web is wove. The work is done.) 
Stay, oh stay ! nor thus forlorn 
Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn : 
In yon bright track, that fires the western skies, 
They melt, they vanish from my eyes. 

E 



66 THOMAS GRAY. 

But oh ! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height 105 
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll ? 

Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! 
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! 
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. 
All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail ! no 

in. 2. 

"Girt with many a baron bold 
. Sublime their starry fronts they rear; 

And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old 
In bearded majesty, appear. 

In the midst a form divine ! 115 

Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line; 
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face, 
Attemper'd sweet to virgin-grace. 
What strings symphonious tremble in the air, 

What strains of vocal transport round her play ! 120 

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear; 

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. 
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings, 
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colour'd wings. 

in. 3. 

" The verse adorn again 12s 

Fierce War, and faithful Love, 
And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest. 

In buskin'd measures move 

Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain, 
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 130 

A voice, as of the cherub-choir, 
Gales from blooming Eden bear; 
And distant warblings lessen on my ear, 

That lost in long futurity expire. 



THE BARD, 

Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 

Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day ? 
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, 

And warms the nations with redoubled ray. 
Enough for me; with joy I see 

The different doom our fates assign. 
Be thine despair, and sceptred care; 

To triumph, and to die, are mine." 
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height 
Deep in the roaring tide he plung'd to endless night. 



67 



135 



140 




QUEEN ELIZABETH. 




HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 



7,hva 

Tov (ppoveiv fiporovs 66(0- 
aavTa, tw 7rd0et naOav 
Qevra Kvpia>? e'xefi/. 

-^Eschylus, Agatn. 

Daughter of Jove, relentless power, 

Thou tamer of the human breast, 
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour 

The bad affright, afflict the best ! 
Bound in thy adamantine chain, 5 

The proud are taught to taste of pain, 
And purple tyrants vainly groan 
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. 

When first thy sire to send on earth 

Virtue, his darling child, design'd, ic 

To thee he gave the heavenly birth, 

And bade to form her infant mind. 
Stern rugged nurse ! thy rigid lore 
With patience many a year she bore : 
W r hat sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, 15 

And from her own she leaned to melt at others' woe. 



HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 69 

Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly 

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood, 
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, 

And leave us leisure to be good. 20 

Light they disperse, and with them go 
The summer friend, the flattering foe ; 
By vain Prosperity receiv'd, 
To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd. 

Wisdom in sable garb array'd, 25 

Immersed in rapturous thought profound, 

And Melancholy, silent maid, 

With leaden eye that loves the ground, 

Still on thy solemn steps attend; 

Warm Charity, the general friend, 30 

With Justice, to herself severe, 
And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. 

Oh! gently on thy suppliant's head, 

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand ! 

Not in thy Gorgon tenors clad, 35 

Not circled with the vengeful band 

(As by the impious thou art seen), 

With thundering voice and threatening mien, 

With screaming Horror's funeral cry, 
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty : 40 

Thy form benign, O goddess, wear, 

Thy milder influence impart; 
Thy philosophic train be there 

To soften, not to wound, my heart. 
The generous spark extinct revive, 45 

Teach me to love and to forgive, 
Exact my own defects to scan, 
What others are to feel, and know mvself a Man. 




BERKELEY CASTLE. 



" Mark the year, and mark the night, 
When Severn shall reecho with affright 
The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, 
Shrieks of an agonizing king!" 

The Bard, 53. 



NOTES 



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 

A. S., Anglo-Saxon 
Arc, Milton's Arcades. 

C. T., Chaucer's Canter out y 'j. ales. 
Cf. (confer), compare. 

D. V., Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 
Ep., Epistle, Epode. 

Foil, following. 

F. Q., Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

Gosse, Mr. Edmund Gosse's Works of Thomas Gray (London, 1884). 
H.. Haven's Rhetoric (Harper's edition). 

Hales, Longer English Poems, edited by Rev. T. W. Hales (London, 1872)* 
II Pens., Milton's II Penseroso. 
L'AIL, " V Allegro. 

01., Pindar's Olympian Odes. 
P. L., Milton's Paradise Lost. 
P. R., " " Regained. 

S. A., " Samson Agonistes. 

Shakes. Gr., Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (the references are to sections, not 
pages). 

Shep. Kal., Spenser's Shepherd" 1 s Kalendar. 

St., stanza. 

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto eaition). 

Wore, Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition). 

Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, works of 
Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, etc.) need no explanation. 



NOTES. 






ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 

This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until 1750, 
when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12, 1750) in which 
he says : " I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue 
good part of the summer), and having put an end to a thing, whose begin- 
ning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, 
look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it : a merit that most 
of my writings have wanted, and are like to want." It was shown in 
manuscript to some of the author's friends, and was published in 175 1 
only because it was about to be printed surreptitiously. 

February 11, 1751, Gray wrote to Walpole that the proprietors of "the 
Magazine of Magazines " were about to publish his Elegy, and added, " I 
have but one bad way left to escape the honour they would inflict upon 
me ; and therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print 
it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your 
copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, 
but on his best paper and character ; he must correct the press himself, 
and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense 
is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be — 'Elegy, 
written in a Country Churchyard.' If he would add a line or two to say 



74 



NOTES. 



it came into his hands by accident, I should like it better." Walpole 
did as requested, and wrote an advertisement to the effect that accident 
alone brought the poem before the public, although an apology was un- 
necessary to any but the author. On which Gray wrote, " I thank you 
for your advertisement, which saves my honour." 

Dodsley's proof-reading must have been somewhat careless, for there 
are many errors of the press in this editio princeps. Gray writes to 
Walpole, under date of " Ash- Wednesday, Cambridge, 1751," as follows: 
" Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or two in the cradle, that (I doubt) 
it will bear the marks of as long as it lives. But no matter : we have 
ourselves suffered under her hands before now ; and besides, it will only 
look the more careless and by accident as it were." Again, March 3, 
1 75 1, he writes: " I do not expect any more editions ; as I have appeared 
in more magazines than one. The chief errata were sacred for secret ; 
hidden for kindred (in spite of dukes and classics) ; and ''frowning as in 
scorn' for smiling. I humbly propose, for the benefit of Mr. Dodsley and 
his matrons, that take awake [in line 92, which at first read " awake and 
faithful to her wonted fires "] for a verb, that they should read asleep^ 
and all will be right." 

A writer in Notes and Queries, June 12, 1875, states that the poem first 
appeared in the London Magazine, March, 175 1, p. 134, and that "the 
Magazine of Magazines" is "a gentle term of scorn used by Gray to indi- 
cate " that periodical, and not the name of any actual magazine. But in 
the next number of Notes and Queries (June 19, 1875) Mr. F. Locker 
informs us that he has in his possession a title-page of the Grand Maga- 
zine of Magazines, and the page of the number for April, 1*751, which 
contains the Elegy. The magazine is said to be " collected and digested 
by Roger Woodville, Esq.," and "published by Cooper at the Globe, in 
Pater Noster Row." 

The facts are, that the poem was first published by Dodsley on the 
16th of February, 1751 (Gosse, vol. i. p. 72) ; that it appeared in the 
Magazine of Magazines for February, issued at the end' of that month, 
according to the custom of the time ;* that it was next printed in the 
London Magazine for March; and again in the Grand Magazine of Maga- 
zines for April. 

In the Magazine of Magazines, the poem is introduced as follows 
{Chambers' 's Book of Days, vol. ii. p. 146) : " Some imaginary literary wag 
is made to rise in a convivial assembly, and thus announce it : ' Gentle- 
men, give me leave to soothe my own melancholy, and amuse you in a 
most noble manner, with a full copy of verses by the very ingenious 
Mr. Gray, of Peterhouse, Cambridge. They are stanzas written in a 
country churchyard.' Then follow the verses." 

* Ignorance or oversight of this custom has led the editors, with the single exception 
of Gosse, to assume that the appearance of the poem in the February number of the 
magazine must have been earlier than Dodsley's publication of it on the 16th of February. 
But we find the latter chronicled in the ''monthly catalogue" of new books in the 
February number of the London Magazine thus: "An Elegy wrote in a Church-yard, 
pr. 6d. Dodsley." In the March number of the same magazine we find a summary of 
current news down to Sunday, March 31. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. ? c 

Gray says nothing in his letters of the appearance of the Elegy in the 
London Magazine. The full title of that periodical was " The London 
Magazine : or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer." The editor's name 
was not given; the publisher was " R. Baldwin, jun. at the Rose in Pater- 
Noster Row." The volume for 1751 was the 20th, and the Preface (writ- 
ten at the close of the year) begins thus : " As the two most formidable 
Enemies we have ever had, are now extinct, we have great Reason to 
conclude, that it is only the Merit, and real Usefulness of our Collec- 
tion, that hath supported its Sale and Reputation for Twenty Years." 
A foot-note informs us that the "Enemies" are the "Magazine of Maga- 
zines and Grand Magazine of Magazines." 

The author's name is not given with the Elegy as printed in the Lon* 
don Magazine. The poem is sandwiched between an "Epilogue to Alfred, 
a Masque" and some coarse rhymes entitled " Strip-Me-Naked, or Royal 
Gin for ever." There is not even a printer's "rule" or "dash" to sepa- 
rate the title of the latter from the last line of the Elegy. The poem is 
more correctly printed than in Dodsley's authorized edition; though, 
queerly enough, it has " winds " in the second line and the parenthesis 
" (all he had) " in the Epitaph. The only other misprints worth noting 
are, " Their harrow oft," " Or wake to extasy the living lyre," and 
" shapeless culture deck'd."* 

The authorized though anonymous edition was thus briefly noticed by 
The Monthly Review, the critical Rhadamanthus of the day : "An Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard. 4to. Dodsley's. Seven pages. — The excel- 
lence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity." 

" Soon after its publication," says Mason, " I remember, sitting with 
Mr. Gray in his College apartment, he expressed to me his surprise at 
the rapidity of its sale. I replied : ' Sunt lacrymae rerum, et mentem 
mortalia tangunt.' He paused awhile, and taking his pen, wrote the line 
on a printed copy of it lying on his table. ' This,' said he, ' shall be its 
future motto.' *■ Pity,' cried I, ■ that Dr. Young's Night Thoughts have 
preoccupied it.' ' So,' replied he, 'indeed it is.'" Gray himself tells the 
story of its success on the margin of the manuscript copy of the Elegy 
preserved at Cambridge among his papers, and reproduced in facsimile 
in Mathias's elegant edition of the poet. The following is a careful 
transcript of the memorandum : 

"publish'd in | Feb : T ?. 1751. | by Dodsley : & | went thro' four | Edi- 
tions ; in two | months ; and af- | terwards a fifth, | 6 th 7 th & 8 th 9 th & 
10 th I & 11 th I printed also in 1753, | with M r Bentley's | Designs, of 
w ch I there is a 2 d Edition | & again by Dodsley | in his Miscellany, | Vol : 
4 th & in a I Scotch Collection | call'd the Union. | translated into | Latin 
by Chr : Anstey | Esq, & the Rev d M r | Roberts, & publish'd | in 1762; 
& again | in the same year | by Rob : Lloyd, M : A :" 

* We have not been able to find the Mz^zzine of Magazines or the Grand Magazine 
of Magazines in the libraries, and know nothing about either " of our own knowledge." 
The London Magazine is in the Harvard College Library, and the statements concern- 
ing that we can personally vouch for. 



7 6 NOTES. 

"One peculiar and remarkable tribute to the merit of the Elegy" says 
Professor Henry Reed, "is to be noticed in the great number of transla- 
tions which have been made of it into various languages, both of ancient 
and modern Europe. It is the same kind of tribute which has been ren- 
dered to Robinson Cncsoe and to The Pilgrim's Progress, and is proof of 
the same universality of interest, transcending the limits of language and 
of race. To no poem in the English language has the same kind of 
homage been paid so abundantly. Of what other poem is there a poly- 
glot edition ? Italy and England have competed with their polyglot 
editions of the Elegy : Torri's, bearing the title, ' Elegia di Tomaso 
Gray sopra un Cimitero di Campagna, tradotta dall' Inglese in piii lingue : 
Verona, 1817; Livorno, 1843 »' aR d Van Voorst's London edition." Pro- 
fessor Reed adds a list of the translations (which, however, is incom- 
plete), including one in Hebrew, seven in Greek, twelve in Latin, thirteen 
in Italian, fifteen in French, six in German, and one in Portuguese. 

" Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy" remarks Byron, " high as 
he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher ; it is the corner- 
stone of his glory." 

The tribute paid the poem by General Wolfe is familiar to all, but we 
cannot refrain from quoting Lord Mahon's beautiful account of it in his 
History of England. On the night of September 13th, 1759, the night 
before the battle on the Plains of Abraham, Wolfe was descending the 
St. Lawrence with a part of his troops. The historian says : " Swiftly, 
but silently, did the boats fall down with the tide, unobserved by the 
enemy's sentinels at their posts along the shore. Of the soldiers on 
board, how eagerly must every heart have throbbed at the coming con- 
flict ! how intently must every eye have contemplated the dark outline, 
as it lay pencilled upon the midnight sky, and as every moment it grew 
closer and clearer, of the hostile heights ! Not a word was spoken — not 
a sound heard beyond the rippling of the stream. Wolfe alone — thus 
tradition has told us — repeated in a low tone to the other officers in his 
boat those beautiful stanzas with which a country churchyard inspired 
the muse of Gray. One noble line, 

' The paths of glory lead but to the grave,' 

must have seemed at such a moment fraught with mournful meaning. At 
the close of the recitation Wolfe added, ' Now, gentlemen, I would rather 
be the author of that poem than take Quebec' " 

Hales, in his Introduction to the poem, remarks : " The Elegy is per- 
haps the most widely known poem in our language. The reason of this 
extensive popularity is perhaps to be sought in the fact that it expresses 
in an exquisite manner feelings and thoughts that are universal. In the 
current of ideas in the Elegy there is perhaps nothing that is rare, or ex- 
ceptional, or out of the common way. The musings are of the most 
rational and obvious character possible ; it is difficult to conceive of any 
one musing under similar circumstances who should not muse so ; but 
they are not the less deep and moving on this account. The mystery of 
life does not become clearer, or less solemn and awful, for any amount 
of contemplation. Such inevitable, such everlasting questions as rise on 
the mind when one lingers in the precincts of Death can never lose their 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 77 

freshness, never cease to fascinate and to move. It is with such ques- 
tions, that would have been commonplace long ages since if they could 
ever be so, that the Elegy deals. It deals with them in no lofty philo- 
sophical manner, but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always with 
the truest and the broadest humanity. The poet's thoughts turn to the 
poor ; he forgets the fine tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the 
* mouldering heaps' in the churchyard. Hence the problem that espe- 
cially suggests itself is the potential greatness, when they lived, of the 
1 rude forefathers ' that now lie at his feet. He does not, and cannot solve 
it, though he finds considerations to mitigate the sadness it must inspire ; 
but he expresses it in all its awfulness in the most effective language and 
with the deepest feeling ; and his expression of it has become a living 
part of our language." 

The writer in the North American Review (vol. 96) from whom we have 
elsewhere quoted says of the Elegy : " It is upon this that Gray's fame as 
a poet must chiefly rest. By this he will be known forever alike to the 
lettered and the unlettered. Many, in future ages, who may never have 
heard of his classic Odes, his various learning, or his sparkling letters, 
will revere him only as the author of the Elegy. For this he will be en- 
shrined through all time in the hearts of the myriads who shall speak 
our English tongue. For this his name will be held in glad remem- 
brance in the far-off summer isles of the Pacific, and amidst the waste of 
polar snows. If he had written nothing else, his place as a leading poet 
in our language would still be assured. Many have asserted, with John- 
son, that he was a mere mechanical poet — one who brought from without, 
but never found within ; that the gift of inspiration was not native to 
him ; that his imagination was borrowed finery, his fancy tinsel, and his 
invention the world's well-worn jewels ; that whatever in his verse was 
poetic w r as not new r , and what was new was not poetic ; that he was only 
an unworldly dyspeptic, living amid many books, and laboriously delving 
for a lifetime between musty covers, picking out now and then another's 
gems and bits of ore, and fashioning them into ill-compacted mosaics, 
which he wrongly called his own. To all this the Elegy is a sufficient 
answer. It is not old — it is not bookish ; it is new and human. Books 
could not make its maker : he was born of the divine breath alone. 
Consider all the commentators, the scholiasts, the interpreters, the anno- 
tators, and other like book-worms, from Aristarchus down to Doderlein ; 
and may it not be said that, among them all, ' Nee viget quidquam sim- 
ile aut secundum ?' 

" Gray wrote but little, yet he wrote that little well. He might have 
done far more for us; the same is true of most men, even of the greatest. 
The possibilities of a life are always in advance of its performance. But 
we cannot say that his life was a wasted one. Even this little Elegy 
alone should go for much. For, suppose that he had never written this, 
but instead had done much else in other ways, according to his powers : 
that he had written many learned treatises ; that he had, with keen criti- 
cism, expounded and reconstructed Greek classics ; that he had, per- 
chance, sat upon the woolsack, and laid rich offerings at the feet of blind 
Justice ; — taking the years together, would it haye been, on the whole, 



78 



NOTES. 



better for him or for us ? Would he have added so much to the sum of 
human happiness ? He might thus have made himself a power for a 
time, to be dethroned by some new usurper in the realm of knowledge ; 
now he is a power and a joy forever to countless thousands." 

Three manuscripts of the Elegy, in Gray's handwriting, still exist. The 
poet bequeathed his library, letters, and many miscellaneous papers, to his 
friends the Rev. William Mason and the Rev. James Browne, as joint liter- 
ary executors. Mason bequeathed the entire trust to Mr. Stonhewer. The 
latter, in making his will, divided the legacy into two parts. The larger 
share went to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke Hall. Among the pa- 
pers, which are still in the possession of the College, was found a copy of 
the Elegy. An excellent fac-simile of this manuscript appears in Mathias's 
edition of Gray, published in 1814, and from this our readings are taken. 
In referring to it hereafter we shall designate it as the " Pembroke" MS. 

The remaining portion of Gray's literary bequest, including the other 
manuscript of the Elegy, was left by Mr. Stonhewer to his friend, Mr. 
Bright. In 1845 Mr. Bright's sons sold the collection at auction. The 
MS. of the Elegy was bought by Mr. Granville John Penn, of Stoke Park, 
for one hundred pounds — the highest sum that had ever been known to 
be paid for a single sheet of paper. In 1854 this manuscript came again 
into the market, and was knocked down to Mr. Robert Charles Wright- 
son, of Birmingham, for ^131. On the 28th of May, 1875, ^ was onc e 
more offered for sale in London, and was purchased by Sir William 
Fraser for £ 2 3°i or about $1150. A photographic reproduction of it. 
was published in London in 1862, and a transcript (100 copies), edited 
by Sir William Fraser, was printed in 1884.* For convenience we shall 
refer to it as the " Fraser " MS. Gosse calls it the " Mason " MS. 

There can be little doubt that the Fraser MS. is the original one, and 
that the Pembroke MS. is a fair copy made from it by the poet. The 
former contains a greater number of alterations, and varies more from 
the printed text. It bears internal evidence of being the rough draft, 
while the other represents a later stage of the poem. 

The third MS., which belonged to, Wharton and is now among the 
Egerton MSS. (No. 2400) in the British Museum, was evidently written 
a little earlier than the Pembroke MS., from which it differs but slightly. 

The Fraser MS., like the other two, has in the first stanza, "The lowing 
Herd wind slowly," etc. See our note on this line, p. 83 below. 

In the 2d stanza, it reads, " And now the Air," and " Or drowzy." 

In 3d stanza, it has "stray too" written above "wandring," and "& 
pry into" above "Molest her ;" as if the poet had thought of reading 

" Of such as stray too near her secret bower 
And pry into her solitary reign." 

* We have had the privilege of consulting a copy of the photograph belonging to 
Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D.D., of Boston, as well as the Fraser reprint in the pos- 
session of the Harpers. We are also indebted to Dr. Clarke for the use of an exact 
transcript of the Egerton MS. made for him at the British Museum. 

The two stanzas of which a fac-simile is given on page 73 are from the Pembroke MS., 
but the wood-cut hardly does justice to the feminine delicacy of the poet's handwriting. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 79 

In 4th stanza, "Village" is crossed out,* and " Hamlet" written above. 

The 5th stanza is as follows : 

"For ever sleep: the breezy Call of Morn, 
Or Swallow twitt'ring from the strawbuilt Shed, 
Or Chaunticleer so shrill or ecchoing Horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly Bed." 

The 6th stanza has "Nor climb;" and "envied" is written above 
"coming," which is underlined, and "doubtful " is put in the margin as 
an alternative reading. 

In 8th stanza, "useful" is underlined, and "homely" put in the margin; 
and the next line has "rustic Joys." 
In 10th stanza, the first two lines read : 

" Forgive ye Proud th' involuntary Fault, 
If Memory to these no Trophies raise." 

The nth stanza has "awake the silent Dust," with "awake" under- 
lined and " provoke " in the margin. 

The 12th stanza has "Reins of Empire." 

The next stanza in the MS. (marked, however, for transposition) reads 

thus: "Some Village Cato with dauntless Breast 

The little Tyrant of his Fields withstood ; 
Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest ; 
Some Caesar, guiltless of his Country's Blood. "t 

* It should be understood that words are not crossed out in the MS. when others are 
written above, below, or in the margin, except in the instances specified by us. 

t The Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, has a long article entitled, "A Lesson 
from Gray s Elegy," from which we cull the following paragraphs: 

"Gray, having first of all put down the names of three Komans as illustrations of his 
meaning, afterwards deliberately struck them out and put the names of three Englishmen 
instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the age, a change with which Gray 
himself had a good deal to do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, 
and Caesar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, seems to us so ob- 
viously a change for the better that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It 
is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would have thought the matter 
equally clear. We suspect that to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring 
novelty to draw illustrations from English history, especially from parts of English his- 
tory which, it must be remembered, were then a great deal more recent than they are 
now. To be sure, in choosing English illustrations, a poet of Gray's time was in rather 
a hard strait. If he chose illustrations from the century or two before his own time, he 
could only choose names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent politics. If, 
in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had drawn illustrations from earlier times of 
English history, he would have found but few people in his day likely to understand 
him. . . . 

" The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza is not only an improvement 
in a particular poem, it is a sign of a general improvement in taste. He wrote first ac- 
cording to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed it according to his 
own better taste. And of that better taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. 
Gray's poetry must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to' the fact that they were 
Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, English things had a higher claim than 
Roman, and that to them English examples ought to be more speaking than Roman ones. 
But there is -another side of the case not to be forgotten. Those who would have re- 
gretted the change from Cato, Tully, and Caesar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, 
those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of Hampden, Milton, and Crom- 
- well was a degradation of what they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those 
who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and Caesar. The ' classic' taste from which 
Gray helped to deliver us was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Par- 
donable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when 'classic' studies and objects 
had the charm of novelty, it had become by his day a mere silly fashion." 



8o NOTES. 

The first line is indistinct, owing (as the photograph shows) to the wear 
in folding the sheet, and the pronoun after "Cato" is illegible. The 
Fraser reprint reads as above. 

The 13th stanza (present numbering) has "Chill Penury had damped?* 
with "depress'd" and "repressM" written above. 

The 17th stanza has "Their Fate" with "Lot" above; and "Their 
s t ru gg'I*"g Virtues," with "growing" above. 

The 1 8th stanza has "And at the Shrine," with "crown" above "at 
the." The next line begins with " Burn," which is crossed out and 
"With" written above; and it has "hallow'd in the Muse's Flame," 
with "by" written above "in," and "kindled at" wider "hallow'd 
in." 

After this stanza, the MS. has the following four stanzas, which have a 
line drawn beside them, indicating that they are to be omitted : 

"The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow 
Exalt the brave, & idolize Success 
But more to Innocence their Safety owe 
Than Power & Genius e'er conspir'd to bless 

And thou, who mindful of the unhonour'd Dead 
Dost in these Notes their artless Tale relate 
By Night & lonely Contemplation led 
To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate 

Hark how the sacred Calm, that broods around 
Bids ev'ry fierce tumultuous Passion cease 
In still small Accents whisp'ring from the Ground 
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace 

No more with Reason & thyself at Strife 
Give anxious Cares & endless Wishes room 
But thro the cool sequester'd Vale of Life 
Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom." 

The second of these stanzas has been remodelled and used as the 24th 
of the present version. Mason thought that there was a pathetic melan- 
choly in all four which claimed preservation. The third he considered 
equal to any in the whole Elegy. The poem was originally intended to 
end here, the introduction of " the hoary-headed swain " being a happy 
after-thought. 

In the 19th stanza, the MS. has 'never knew to stray;" and "noise- 
less" is written over "silent." 

In the 2 1 st stanza, " Fame, & Epitaph" etc. 

In the 23d stanza, the last line reads, " And buried Ashes glow with 
social Fires." 

After this stanza the MS. has " For Thee, who mindful &c. : as above," 
indicating that the stanza is to be transposed to this point. 

The 24th stanza reads, 

"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more, 
By sympathetic Musings here delay'd, 
With vain, tho' kind, Enquiry shall explore 
Thy once-loved Haunt, this long-deserted Shade." 

The first line of the 25th stanza has "shall say;" and the last two lines 

r&?ad 

» "With hasty Footsteps brush the Dews away 

On the high Brow of yonder hanging Lawn." 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. %% 

Then comes the following stanza, afterwards omitted : 

"Him have we seen the Green-wood Side along, 
While o'er the Heath we hied, our Labours done, 
Oft as the Woodlark piped her farewell Song 
With whistful Eyes pursue the setting Sun." 

Mason remarked : " I rather wonder that he rejected this stanza, as it 
not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which charms us peculiarly 
in this part of the poem, but also completes the account of his whole day; 
whereas, this evening scene being omitted, we have only his morning 
walk, and his noontide repose:" 

The first line of the 26th stanza is " Oft at the Foot of yonder hoary 
Beech," with "spreading" and "nodding" written above. 

The first line of the 27th stanza reads, " With Gestures quaint now 
smileing as in Scorn." The next line has " wayward fancies " written 
above "fond Conceits," and both "loved" (crossed out) and "would he" 
above " wont to," which is crossed out. The next line was at first " Now 
woeful wan, he droop'd, as one forlorn;" but "he droop'd" is crossed 
out, and "drooping" is written above "woeful." 

The first line of the 28th stanza has "we miss'd him," and the first 
syllable of "accustomd" is crossed out. The second line was at first 
" By the Heath-side, & at his fav'rite Tree ;" but "side " is crossed out, 
"Along the" written above "By the," and "near" above "at." In the 
last line "by" is written above "at." 

In the 29th stanza, the first line has "Dirges meet;" the second line 
has "by" above "thro;" and the last, originally "Wrote on the Stone 
beneath that ancient Thorn," has " Graved " and " carved " above 
"Wrote" and "yon" above "that." 

After the 29th stanza, and before the Epitaph, the MS. has the follow- 
ing omitted stanza : 

"There scatter 1 d oft the earliest of y e Year 
By Hands unseen are frequent Vi'lets found 
The Robin loves to build & warble there 
And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground." 

"Year" is written above an erased "Spring;" the second line has 
"Showers of" above "frequent;" and the third line has "Redbreast" 
above "Robin." 

This stanza, with these verbal changes, is appended to the Pembroke 
MS. (it is not in the Egerton MS.), and was printed in all the editions up 
to 1753- I* was tnen dropped because Gray considered it too long a pa- 
renthesis in this place. The part was sacrificed for the good of the whole. 

The first line of the 31st stanza has " his Heart sincere ;" and the last 
two lines read thus : 

" He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear. 
He gained from Heav'n ; 'twas all he wish'd, a Friend." 

The 32d and last stanza is as follows : 

" No farther seek his Merits to disclose, 
Nor seek to draw them from their dread Abode 
(His Frailties there in trembling Hope repose) 
The Bosom of his Father & his God. " 

In the second line "think" is written above "seek." 

F 



82 NOTES. 

The Pembroke MS. has the following variations from the ordinary 
version : 

In the 2d stanza, " Or drowsy," etc. 
5th stanza, "and [&] the ecchoing Horn.'* 
6th stanza, " Nor climb his Knees." 
The 10th stanza begins, 

"Forgive, ye Proud, th? involuntary Fault 
If Memory to These" etc., 

the present readings ("Nor you," "impute to These the," and "Memory 
o'er their tomb") being inserted in the margin. 

The 12th stanza has "Reins of Empire," with "Rod" in the margin. 

In the 15th stanza, the word "Lands" has been crossed out, and 
" Fields " written above it. 

The 17th has " Or shut the Gates," etc. 

In the 2 1st we have " Fame & Epitaph supply." 

The 23d has "And in our Ashes glow" the readings " Ev'n " and 
"live" being inserted in the margin. 

The 27th stanza has "would he rove." 

In the 28th stanza, the first line reads "from the custom'd Hill." 

In the 29th, a word which we cannot make out has been erased, and 
" aged " substituted. 

Before the Epitaph, two asterisks refer to the bottom of the page, where 
the stanza beginning "There scatter' d oft" (see p. 81 above) is given in 
its revised form, with the marginal note, " Omitted in 1753." 

The last two lines of the 31st stanza (see note on p. 93 below) are 
pointed as follows : 

"He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear, 
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a Friend." 

Some of the peculiarities of spelling in this MS. are the following : 
"Curfeu;" "Plowman;" "Tinkleings;" "mopeing;" "ecchoing;" "Hus- 
wife;" "He" (aisle); "wast" (waste); " village-Hambden;" "Rhimes;" 
"spell't;" "chearful;" "born" (borne); etc. 

The Egerton MS. has the following variations : in 2d stanza, " Or drow- 
sy;" in 5th, "and the ecchoing;" in 6th, "Nor climb;" in 7th, " Sickles;" 
in ioth, " Forgive y ye Proud," etc., as in Fraser MS. ; in 12th, "Reins of 
Empire ;" in 17th, " Or shut ;" in 18th, " Shrines ;" in 23d, " And in our 
Ashes glow ;" and in 27th, "would he rove." 

Several localities have contended for the honor of being the scene of 
the Elegy, but the general sentiment has always, and justly, been in favor 
of Stoke-Pogis. It was there that Gray began the poem in 1742 ; and 
there, as we have seen, he finished it in 1750. In that churchyard his 
mother was buried, and there, at his request, his own remains were after- 
wards laid beside her. The scene is, moreover, in all respects in perfect 
keeping with the spirit of the poem. 

According to the common Cambridge tradition, Granchester, a parish 
about two miles southwest of the University, to which Gray was in the 
habit of taking his "constitutional" daily, is the locality of the poem; and 
the great bell of St. Mary's is the " curfew " of the first stanza. Another 
tradition makes a similar claim for Madingley, some three miles and a 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



83 



half northwest of Cambridge. Both places have churchyards such as the 
Elegy describes ; and this is about all that can be said in favor of their 
pretensions. There is also a parish called Burnham Beeches, in Buck- 
inghamshire, which one writer at least has suggested as the scene of the 
poem ; but the spot, though familiar to Gray, was not hallowed to him by 
the fond and tender associations that gathered about Stoke. 

1. The curfew. Hales remarks: "It is a great mistake to suppose 
that the ringing of the curfew was, at its institution, a mark of Norman 
oppression. If such a custom was unknown before the Conquest, it only 
shows that the old English police was less well-regulated than that of 
many parts of the Continent, and how much the superior civilization of 
the Norman-French was needed. Fires were the curse of the timber-built 
towns of the Middle Ages: ' Solae pestes Londoniae sunt stultorum im- 
modica potatio &l frequens incendium? (Fitzstephen). The enforced ex- 
tinction of domestic lights at an appointed signal was designed to be a 
safeguard against them." 

Warton wanted to have this line read 

"The curfew tolls !— the knell ot parting day." 

But the MSS.show that Gray did not write it so, and the change introduces 
a discord into the very first bar of the rhythmic movement of the poem. 
Mitford says that toll is " not the appropriate verb," as the curfew was 
rung, not tolled. We presume that depended, to some extent, on the 
fancy of the ringer. Milton (77 Pens. 76) speaks of the curfew as 

"Swinging slow with sullen roar." 
Gray himself quotes here Dante, Purgat. 8 : 

— "squilla di lontano 
Che paia '1 giorno pianger, che si muore ;" 

and we cannot refrain from adding, for the benefit of those unfamiliar 
with Italian, Longfellow's exquisite translation : 

— "from far away a bell 
That seemeth to deplore the dying day." 

Mitford quotes (incorrectly, as often) Dryden, Prol. to Troilus and Cres- 
sida, 22 : 

"That tolls the knell for their departed sense." 

On parting— departing, cf. Shakes. Cor. v. 6 : " When I parted hence ;" 
Goldsmith, D. V. 171 : "Beside the bed where parting life was laid," etc. 

2. The lowing herd ivind, etc. Wind, not winds, is the reading of all 
the MSS. (see fac-simile of this stanza on p. 73) and of all the early edi- 
tions — that of 1768, Mason's, Wakefield's, Mathias's, etc. — but wp find 
no note of the fact in Mitford's or any other of the more recent editions, 
which have substituted winds. Whether the change was made as an 
amendment or accidentally, we do not know;* but the original reading 



* Very likely the latter, as we have seen that winds appears in the unauthorized ver- 
sion of the London Magazine (March, 1751), where it maybe a misprint, like the others 
noted above. 



84 NOTES. 

seems to us by far the better one. The poet does not refer to the herd 
as an aggregate, but to the animals that compose it. He sees, not it, but 
"them on their winding way." The ordinary reading mars both the 
meaning and the melody of the line. 

3. The critic of the N. A. Review points out that this line "is quite pe- 
culiar in its possible transformations. We have made," he adds, "twenty 
different versions preserving the rhythm, the general sentiment, and the 
rhyming word. Any one of these variations might be, not inappropri- 
ately, substituted for the original reading." 

Luke quotes Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7, 39 : " And now she was uppon the 
weary way." 

6. Air is of course the object, not the subject of the verb. 

7. Save where the beetle, etc. Cf. Collins, Ode to Evening* 

"Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat 
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, 

Or where the beetle winds 

His small but sullen horn, 
As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, 
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum." 

and Macbeth, iii. 2 : 

" Ere the bat hath flown 
His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons 
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, 
Hath rung night's yawning peal," etc. 

10. The moping owl. Mitford quotes Ovid, Met. v. 550 : " Ignavus bubo, 
dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, Winter, 114: 

"Assicfuous in his bower the wailing owl 
Plies his sad song ;" 

and Mallet, Excursion : 

"the wailing owl 
Screams solitary to the mournful moon." 

12. Her ancient solitary reign. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iii. 476: "desertaque 
regna pastorum." 

13. " As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer 
people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church. Tenny- 
son {In Mem. x.) speaks of resting 

We may remark here that the edition of 1768 — the editio firincefis of the collected 
Poems — was issued under Gray's own supervision, and is printed with remarkable accu- 
racy. < We have detected only one indubitable error of the type in the entire volume. 
Certain peculiarities of spelling were probably intentional, as we find the like in the fac- 
similes of the poet's manuscripts. The many quotations from Greek, Latin, and Italian 
are correctly given (according to the received texts of the time), and the references to au- 
thorities, so far as we have verified them, are equally exact. The book throughout bears 
the marks of Gray's scholarly and critical habits, and we may be sure that the poems 
appear in precisely the form which he meant they should retain. In doubtful cases, 
therefore, we have generally followed this edition. Mason's (the second edition : York, 
1778) is also carefully edited and printed, and its readings seldom vary from Gray's. All 
of Mitford' s that we have examined swarm with errors, especially in the notes. Picker- 
ing's (1835), edited by Mitford, is perhaps the worst of all. The Boston ed. (Little, Brown, 
& Co., 1853) is a pretty careful reproduction of Pickering's, with all its inaccuracies. 
Gosse's (1884), with all its merits, is inaccurate in its collation of the MSS. of the Elegy. 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 85 

'beneath the clover sod 
That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
The chalice of the grapes of God.' 

In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former 
resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in the 
first instance, for two reasons : (i.) the interior of the church was regarded 
as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place in it, the most 
dearly coveted spot being near the high altar ; (ii.) when elaborate tombs 
were the fashion, they were built inside the church for the sake of security, 
' 2av tombs ' being liable to be ' robb'd ' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's 
White Devil). As these two considerations gradually ceased to have power, 
and other considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the in- 
side of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral 
reasons gave no choice" (Hales). 

17. Cf. Milton, Arcades, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" P. L. ix. 

192: 

" Now when as sacred light began to dawn 
In Eden on the humid flowers that breath'd 
Their morning incense," etc. 

18. Hesiod (Ejoy. 568) calls the swallow opSoyorj x&i$**>v. Cf. Virgil, 
sEn. viii. 455 : 

" Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma, 
Et matutini volucrum suD culmine cantus." 

19. The cock's shrill clarion. Cf. Philips, Cyder, i. 753 : 

"When chanticleer with clarion shrill recalls 
The tardy day ;" 

Milton, P. L. vii. 443 : 

"The crested cock, whose clarion sounds 
The silent hours ;" 
Hamlet, i. I : 

"The cock that is the trumpet to the morn;" 
Quarles, Argalus and Parthenia : 

" I slept not till the early bugle-horn 
Of chaunticlere had summon' d in the morn;" 

and Thomas Kyd, England's Parnassus : 

" The cheerful cock, the sad night's trumpeter, 
Wayting upon the rising of the sunne : 
The wandering swallow with her broken song," etc. 

20. Their lowly bed. Wakefield remarks : " Some readers, keeping in 
mind the ' narrow 7 cell ' above, have mistaken the ' lowly bed ' in this 
verse for the grave — a most puerile and ridiculous blunder ;" and Mit- 
ford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions 
some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they 
sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 
'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his 
Latin translation, mistook it for the latter." 



86 NOTES. 

21. Cf. Lucretius, iii. 894 : 



Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor 
Optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati 
Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent ;" 



and Horace, Epod. ii. 39 : 



"Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet 
Domum atque dulces liberos 

Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum 
Lassi sub adventum viri," etc. 

Mitford quotes Thomson, Winter, 311 : 

" In vain for him the officious wife prepares 
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ; 
In. vain his little children, peeping out 
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire 
With tears ot artless innocence." 

Wakefield cites The Idler, 103 : " There are few things, not purely evil, 
of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last." 

22. Ply her evening care. Mitford says, " To ply a care is an expres- 
sion that is not proper to our language, and was probably formed for the 
rhyme share." Hales remarks: "This is probably the kind of phrase 
which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the Elegy unin- 
telligible. Compare his own 

' And she I cherished turned her wheel 
Beside an English fire.' " 

23. No. children run, etc. Hales quotes Burns, Cotter's Saturday 
Night, 21 : 

"Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through 
To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee." 

24. Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Wakefield compares Vir- 
gil, Geo. ii. 523 : 

"Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;" 

and Mitford adds from Dryden, 

"Whose little arms about thy legs are cast, 
And climbing for a kiss prevent their mother's haste." 

Cf. Thomson, Liberty, iii. 171 : 

"His little children climbing for a kiss." 

26. The stubborn glebe. Cf. Gay, Fables, ii. 15 : 

"Tis mine to tame the stubborn glebe." 
Broke- broken, as often in poetry, especially in the Elizabethan writers. 
See Abbott, Shakes. Gr. 343. 

27. Drive their team afield. Cf. Lycidas, 27 : " We drove afield ;" and 
Dryden, Virgil's Ed. ii. 38 : " With me to drive afield." 

28. Their sturdy stroke. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Feb. : 

"But to the roote bent his sturdy stroa^e, 
And made many wounds in the wast [wasted] Oake;" 



87 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 

and Dryden, Geo. iii. 639 : 

"Labour him with many a sturdy stroke." 

30. As Mitford remarks, obscure and poor make " a very imperfect 
rhyme ;" and the same might be said of toil and smile. 

33. Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind these verses from his 
friend West's Monody on Queen Caroline: 

"Ah, me! what boots us all our boasted power, 
Our golden treasure, and our purple state ; 
They cannot ward the inevitable hour, 
Nor stay the fearful violence of fate." 

Hurd compares Cowley : 

" Beauty, and strength, and wit, and wealth, and power, 
Have their short flourishing hour ; 
And love to see themselves, and smile, 
And joy in their pre-eminence a while: 

Even so in the same land 
Poor weeds, rich com, gay flowers together stand ; 
Alas! Death mows down all with an impartial hand." 

35. Awaits. The reading of the ed. of 1768, as of all three MSS. 
Hour is the subject, not the object, of the verb. 

36. Hayley, in the Life of Crashaw, Biographia Britannica, says that 
this line is " literally translated from the Latin prose of Bartholinus in 
his Danish Antiquities." 

39. Fretted. The fret is, strictly, an ornament used in classical archi- 
tecture, formed by small fillets intersecting each other at right angles. 
Parker [Glossary of Architecture) derives the word from the Latin f return, 
a strait ; and Hales from ferrztm, iron, through the Italian f "errata, an iron 
grating. It is more likely (see Stratmann and Wb.) from the A. S.frcetu, 
an ornament. 

Cf. Hamlet, ii. 2 : 

" This majestical roof fretted with golden fire ;" 
and Cymbeline, ii. 4 : 

"The roof o' the chamber 
With golden cherubins is fretted." 

40. The pealing anthem. Cf. II Penseroso, 161 : 

"There let the pealing organ blow 
To the full-voiced quire below, 
In service high, and anthem clear," etc. 

41. Storied urn. Cf. II Pens. 159 : " storied windows richly dight." On 
animated bust, cf. Pope, Temple of Fame, 73 : "Heroes in animated mar- 
ble frown ;" and Virgil, ALn. vi. 847 : "spirantia aera." 

43. Provoke. Mitford considers this use of the word "unusually bold, 
to say the least." It is simply the etymological meaning,/*? call forth 
(Latin, provocare). See Wb. Cf. Pope, Ode: 

"But when our country's cause provokes to arms." 

44. Dull cold ear. Cf. Shakes. Hen. VIII. iii. 2 : " And sleep in dull, 
cold marble," 



88 NOTES. 

46. Pregnant with celestial fire. This phrase has been copied by 
Cowper in his Boadicea, which is said (see notes of "Globe" ed.) to have 
been written after reading Hume's History, in 1780 : 

"Such the bard's prophetic words, 
Pregnant with celestial fire, 
Bending as he swept the chords 
Of his sweet but awful lyre." 

47. Mitford quotes Ovid, Ep. v. 86 : 

"Sunt mihi quas possint sceptra decere manus." 

48. Living lyre. Cf. Cowley: 

" Begin the song, and strike the living lyre ;" 

and Pope, Windsor Forest, 281 : 

"Who now shall charm the shades where Cowley strung 
His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?" 

50. Cf. Browne, Religio Medici: " Rich with the spoils of nature." 

51. "Rage is often used in the post-Elizabethan writers of the 17th 
century, and in the 18th century writers, for inspiration, enthusiasm" 
(Hales). Cf. Cowley : 

"Who brought green poesy to her perfect age, 
And made that art which was a rage?" 

and Tickell, Prol. : 

"How hard the task! How rare the godlike rage!" 

Cf. also the use of the Latin rabies for the "divine afflatus," as in ALneid, 
vi. 49. 

53. Full many a gem, etc. Cf. Bishop Hall, Contemplations: "There 
is many a rich stone laid up in the bowells of the earth, many a fair 
pearle in the bosome of the sea, that never was seene, nor never shall 
bee." 

Purest ray serene. As Hales remarks, this is a favourite arrangement 
of epithets with Milton. Cf. Hymn on Nativity : " flower-inwoven 
tresses torn ;" Comus: "beckoning shadows dire ;" "every alley green," 
etc. ; L Allegro : " native wood-notes wild ;" Lycidas : " sad occasion 
dear;" "blest kingdoms meek," etc. 

55. Full many a flower, etc. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, iv. 158 : 

"Like roses that in deserts bloom and die." 

Mitford cites Chamberlayne, Pharonida, ii. 4 : 

" Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent 
Of odours in unhaunted deserts;" 

and Young, Univ. Pass. sat. v. : 

" In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, 
She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green ; 
Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, 
And waste their music on the savage race ;' ' 

and Philip, Thule : 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 89 

"Like wood 
And waste 

Hales quotes Waller's 



"Like woodland flowers, which paint the desert glades, 
And waste their sweets in unfrequented shades." 



" Go, lovely rose, 

Tell her that's young 
And shuns to have her graces spied, 

That hadst thou sprung 
In deserts where no men abide 
Thou must have uncommended died." 

On desert air, cf. Macbeth, iv. 3 : " That would be howl'd out in the 
desert air." 

57. It was in 1636 that John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire (a cousin 
of Oliver Cromwell), refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. 
was levying without the authority of Parliament. 

58. Little tyrant. Cf. Thomson, Winter : 

"With open freedom little tyrants raged." 

The artists who have illustrated this passage (see, for instance, Favourite 
English Poems, p. 305, and Harper's Monthly, vol. vii. p. 3) appear to un- 
derstand "little" as equivalent to juvenile. If that had been the mean- 
ing, the poet would have used some other phrase than " of his fields," 
or " his lands," as he first wrote it. 

59. Some mute inglorious Milton. Cf. Phillips, preface to Theatrum 
Poetarum : " Even the very names of some who having perhaps been 
comparable to Homer for heroic poesy, or to Euripides for tragedy, yet 
nevertheless sleep inglorious in the crowd of the forgotten vulgar." 

60. Some Cromwell, etc. Hales remarks : " The prejudice against 
Cromwell was extremely strong throughout the 18th century, even 
amongst the more liberal-minded. That cloud of ' detractions rude,' of 
which Milton speaks in his noble sonnet to our ' chief of men ' as in 
his own day enveloping the great republican leader, still lay thick and 
heavy over him. His wise statesmanship, his unceasing earnestness, 
his high-minded purpose, were not yet seen." 

After this stanza Thomas Edwards, the author of the Canons of Crit- 
icism, would add the following, to supply what he deemed a defect in 
the poem : 

" Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms 
Shone with attraction to herself alone ; 
Whose beauty might have bless' d a monarch's arms, 
Whose virtue cast a lustre on a throne. 

"That humble beauty warm'd an honest heart, 
And cheer' d the labours of a faithful spouse; 
That virtue form'd for every decent part 
The healthful offspring that adorn'd their house." 

Edwards was an able critic, but it is evident that he was no poet 
63. Mitford quotes Tickell : 

"To scatter blessings o'er the British land;" 

and Mrs. Behn : 

"Is scattering plenty over all the land." 

66. Their growing virtues. That is, the growth of their virtues. 



9° 



NOTES. 



67. To wade through slaughter, etc. Cf. Pope, Temp, of Fame, 347 : 

"And swam to empire through the purple flood." 

68. Cf. Shakes. Hen. V. iii. 3 : 

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up." 
70. To quench the blushes, etc. Cf. Shakes. W. T. iv. 3 : 

"Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself" 

73. Far from the madding crowd's, etc. Rogers quotes Drummond : 

"Far from the madding worldling's hoarse discords." 

Mitford points out "the ambiguity of this couplet, which indeed gives a 
sense exactly contrary to that intended ; to avoid which one must break 
the grammatical construction." The poet's meaning is, however, clear 
enough. 

75. Wakefield quotes Pope, Epitaph on Fenton : 

" Foe to loud praise, and friend to learned ease, 
Content with science in the vale of peace." 

77. These bones. " The bones of these. So is is often used in Latin, 
especially by Livy, as in v. 22": ' Ea sola pecunia,' the money derived 
from that sale, etc." (Hales). Still in 78 = always, uniformly. 

84. That teach. Mitford censures teach as ungrammatical ; but it may 
be justified as a " construction according to sense." 

85. Hales remarks: "At the first glance it might seem that to dumb 
Forgetfulness a prey was in apposition to who, and the meaning was, 'Who 
that now lies forgotten,' etc. ; in which case the second line of the stanza 
must be closely connected with the fourth ; for the question of the passage 
is not ' Who ever died ?' but ' Who ever died without wishing to be remem- 
bered?' But in this way of interpreting this difficult stanza (i.) there is 
comparatively little force in the appositional phrase, and (ii.) there is a 
certain awkwardness in deferring so long the clause (virtually adverbal 
though apparently coordinate) in which, as has just been noticed, the 
point of the question really lies. Perhaps therefore it is better to take 
the phrase to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as in fact the completion of the 
predicate resigned, and interpret thus : Who ever resigned this life of his 
with all its pleasures and all its pains to be utterly ignored and forgot- 
ten ?= who ever, when resigning it, reconciled himself to its being for- 
gotten ? In this case the second half of the stanza echoes the thought 
of the first half." 

We give the note in full, and leave the reader to take his choice of the 
two interpretations. For ourself, we incline to the first rather than the 
second. We prefer to take to dumb Forgetfulness a prey as appositional 
and proleptic, and not as the grammatical complement of resigned: Who, 
yielding himself up a prey to dumb Forgetfulness, ever resigned this life 
without casting a longing, lingering look behind ? 

90. Pious is used in the sense of the Latin plus. Ovid has "piae lacri- 
mae." Mitford quotes Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, 49 : 

"No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear 
Pleas' d thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; 
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd" 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 



91 



" In this stanza," says Hales, " he answers in an exquisite manner the 
two questions, or rather the one question twice repeated, of the preceding 
stanza. . . . What he would say is that every one while a spark of life 
yet remains in him yearns for some kindly loving remembrance ; nay, 
even after the spark is quenched, even when all is dust and ashes, that 
yearning must still be felt." 

91, 92. Mitford paraphrases the couplet thus: "The voice of Nature 
still cries from the tomb in the language of the epitaph inscribed upon it, 
which still endeavours to connect us with the living ; the fires of former 
affection are still alive beneath our ashes." 

Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 3880 : 

" Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken." 

Gray himself quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 169 : 

"Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco, 
Fredda una lingua e due begli occhi chiusi, 
Rimaner doppo noi pien di faville," 

translated by Nott as follows : 

"These, my sweet fair, so warns prophetic thought, 
Clos'd thy bright eye, and mute thy poet's tongue, 
E'en after death shall still with sparks be fraught," 

the "these" meaning his love and his songs concerning it. Gray trans- 
lated this sonnet into Latin elegiacs, the last line being rendered, 

"Ardebitque urna multa favilla mea." 

93. For the original form of this stanza (in the Fraser MS.) see p. 80 
above. 
95. Chance is virtually an adverb here = perchance. 
98. The peep of dawn. Mitford quotes Comns, 138: 

"Ere the blabbing eastern scout, 
The nice morn, on the Indian steep 
From her cabin' d loop-hole peep." 



"though from off the boughs each morn 
We brush mellifluous dews :" 



99. Cf. Milton, P. L. v. 428 : 

\* 

and Arcades, 50 : 

"And from the boughs brush off the evil dew." 

Wakefield quotes Thomson, Spring, 103 : 

"Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields, 
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops 
From the bent brush, as through the verdant maze 
Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk." 

IOO. Upland lawn. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 25 : 

1 ' Ere the high lawns appeal d 
Under the opening eyelids of the mom." 

In V Allegro, 92, we have "upland hamlets," where Hales thinks "up- 
land = country, as opposed to town." He adds, " Gray in his Elegy seems 



92 



NOTES. 



to use the Word loosely for ' on the higher ground ;' perhaps he took it 
from Milton, without quite understanding in what sense Milton uses it." 
We doubt whether Hales understands Milton here. It is true that up- 
land used to mean country, as uplanders meant countrymen, and upland- 
ish countrified (see Nares and Wb.), but the other meaning is older than 
Milton (see Halliwell's Diet of Archaic Words), and Johnson, Keightley, 
and others are probably right in considering " upland hamlets " an in- 
stance of it. Masson, in his recent edition of Milton (1875), explains the 
" upland hamlets " as " little villages among the slopes, away from the 
river-meadows and the hay-making." 

101. As Mitford remarks, beech and stretch form an imperfect rhyme. 

102. Luke quotes Spenser, Ruines of Rome, st. 28 : 

"Shewing her wreathed rootes and naked armes." 

103. His listless length. Hales compares King Lear, i. 4 : "If you will 
measure your lubber's length again, tarry." Cf. also Brittaiifs Ida (for- 
merly ascribed to Spenser, but rejected by the best editors), iii. 2 : 

"Her goodly length stretcht on a lilly-bed." 

104. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 644 : " divided by a babbling brook ;" and 

Horace, Od. iii. 13, 15 : 

"unde loquaces 
Lymphae desiliunt tuae." 

Wakefield quotes As You Like It, ii. 1 : 

"as he lay along 
Under an oak whose antique root peeps out 
Upon the brook that brawls along this road." 

105. Smiling as in scorn. Cf. Shakes. Pass. Pilg?-im, 14 : 

" Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile, 
In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether." 

and Skelton, ProL to B. of C. : 

" Smylynge half in scorne 
At our foly." 

107. Woeful-wan. Mitford says : " Woeful-wan is not a legitimate 
compound, and must be divided into two separate words, for such they 
are, when released from the handcuffs of the hyphen." The hyphen is 
not in the edition of 1768, and we should omit it if it were not found in 
the Pembroke MS. 

• Wakefield quotes Spenser, Shep. Kal. Jan. : 

"For pale and wanne he was (alas the while!) 
May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke." 

108. " Hopeless is here used in a proleptic or anticipatory way " (Hales). 

109. Customed is Gray's word, not 'customed, as usually printed. See 
either Wb. or Wore. s. v. Cf. Milton, Ep. Damonis : " Simul assueta 
seditque sub ulmo." 

114. Churchway path. Cf. Shakes. M. IV. D. v. 2 : 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 93 

"Now it is the time of night, 

That the graves all gaping wide, 
Every one lets forth his sprite 

In the churchway paths to glide." 

115. For thou canst read. The " hoary-headed swain" of course could 
not read. 

116. Graved. The old form of the participle is graven, but graved is 
also in good use. The old preterite grove is obsolete. 

117. The lap of earth. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 7, 9 : 

" For other beds the Priests there used none, 
But on their mother Earths deare lap did lie ;' ' 

and Milton, P. L. x. 777 : 

"How glad would lay me down, 
As in my mother's lap!" 

Lucretius (i. 291) has "gremium matris terrai." Mitford adds the pa- 
thetic sentence of Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 63 : " Nam terra novissime com- 
plexa gremio jam a reliqua natura abnegatos, turn maxime, ut mater, 
operit." 

123. He gave to misery all he had, a tear. This is the pointing of the 
line in the MSS. and in all the early editions except that of Mathias, who 
seems to be responsible for the change (adopted by the recent editors, 
almost without exception) to, 

"He gave to Misery (all he had) a tear." 

This alters the meaning, mars the rhythm, and spoils the sentiment. If 
one does not see the difference at once, it would be useless to try to 
make him see it. Mitford, who ought to have known better, not only 
thrusts in the parenthesis, but quotes this from Pope's Homer as an illus- 
tration of it : 

"His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live." 

126. Mitford says that Or in this line should be Nor. Yes, if "draw" 
is an imperative, like " seek ;" no, if it is an infinitive, in the same con- 
struction as "to disclose." That the latter was the construction the poet 

had in mind is evident from the first form of the stanza in the Fraser MS., 

where "seek" is repeated: 

"No farther seek his Merits to disclose, 
Nor seek to draw them from their dread Abode." 

127. In trembling hope. Gray quotes Petrarch, Sonnet 104: "paven- 
tosa speme." Cf. Lucan, Fharsalia, vii. 297: " Spe trepiuo ;" Mallet, 
Funeral Hymn, 473 : 

"With trembling tenderness of hope and fear;" 
and Beaumont, Psyche, xv. 314 : 

"Divided here twixt trembling hope and fear." 
Hooker {Eccl. Pol. i.) defines hope as " a trembling expectation of things 
far removed." 







ODE ON THE SPRING. 

The original manuscript title of this ode was " Noontide." It was first 
printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 271, under the title of " Ode." 

1. The rosy-bosom' d Hours. Cf. Milton, Comus, 984 : " The Graces and 
the rosy-bosom'd Hours ;" and Thomson, Sftri7ig, 1007 : 

''The rosy-bosom'd Spring 
To weeping Fancy pines." 

The Horce, or hours, according to the Homeric idea, were the goddesses 
of the seasons, the course of which was symbolically represented by " the 
dance of the Hours." They were often described, in connection with the 
Graces, Hebe, and Aphrodite, as accompanying with their dancing the 



ODE ON THE SPRING. 



95 



songs of the Muses and the lyre of Apollo. Long after the time of Homer 
they continued to be regarded as the givers of the seasons, especially 
spring and autumn, or " Nature in her bloom and her maturity." At first 
there were only two Horae, Thallo (or Spring) and Karpo (or Autumn) ; 
but later the number was three, like that of the Graces. In art they are 
represented as blooming maidens, bearing the products of the seasons. 

2. Fair Venus" train. The Hours adorned Aphrodite (Venus) as she 
rose from the sea, and are often associated with her by Homer, Hesiod, 
and other classical writers. Wakefield remarks : " Venus is here em- 
ployed, in conformity to the mythology of the Greeks, as the source of 
creation and beauty." 

3. Long-expecting. Waiting long for the spring. Sometimes incor- 
rectly printed "long-expected." Cf. Dryden, Astrcea Redux, 132: "To 
flowers that in its womb expecting lie." 

4. The purple year. Cf. the Pervigilium Veneris, 13 : " Ipsa gemmis 
purpurantem pingit annum floribus ;" Pope, Pastorals, i. 28 : "And lavish 
Nature paints the purple year;" and Mallet, Zephyr: " Gales that wake 
the purple year." 

5. The Attic warbler. The nightingale, called "the Attic bird," either 
because it was so common in Attica, or from the old legend that Philo- 
mela (or, as some say, Procne), the daughter of a king of Attica, was 
changed into a nightingale. Cf. Milton's description of Athens (P. R. 
iv. 245) : 

"where the Attic bird 
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long." 

Cf. Ovid, Hal. no: "Attica avis verna sub tempestate queratus ;" and 
Propertius, ii. 16, 6 : "Attica volucris." 

Pours her throat is a metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man. 
iii. 33 : " Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat ?" 

6. 7. Cf. Thomson, Spi-ing, 577 : 

" From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings, 
The symphony of spring." 

9, 10. Cf. Milton, Comus, 989 : 

" And west winds with musky wing 
About the cedarn alleys fling 
Nard and cassia's balmy smells." 

12. Cf. Milton, P. L. iv. 245 : " Where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd 
the noontide bowers;" Pope, Eloisa, 170 : "And breathes a browner 
horror on the woods ;" Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. 38: "Or Au- 
tumn's varied shades imbrown the walls." 

According to Ruskin (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 241, Amer. ed.) there 
is no brown in nature. After remarking that Dante " does not acknowl- 
edge the existence of the colour of brown at all," he goes on to say: " But 
one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be 
sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his 
work, when he said, suddenly and by mere accident, after we had been 
talking about other things, * Do you know I have found that there is no 
brown in nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of 



96 N01ES. 

orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered 
by contrast.' It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, 
how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediaeval sense of hue," 
etc. 

13. O'ercanopies the glade. Gray himself quotes Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 1 : 
" A bank o'ercanopied with luscious woodbine."* Cf. Fletcher, Purple 
Island, i. 5, 30 : " The beech shall yield a cool, safe canopy ;" and Milton, 
Comus, 543 : "a bank, With ivy canopied." 

15. Rushy brink. Cf. Comus, 890 : " By the rushy-fringed bank." 

19, 20. These lines, as first printed, read : 

"How low, how indigent the proud! 
How little are the great!" 

22. The panting herds. Cf. Pope, Past. ii. 87 : " To closer shades the 
panting flocks remove." 

23. The peopled air. Cf. Walton, C. A. : " Now the wing'd people of 
the sky shall sing;" Beaumont, Psyche: "Every tree empeopled was 
with birds of softest throats." 

24. The busy murmur. Cf. Milton, P. R. iv. 248 : " bees' industrious 
murmur." 

25. The insect youth. Perhaps suggested by a line in Green's Hermit- 
age, quoted in a letter of Gray to Walpole : " From maggot-youth through 
change of state," etc. See on 31 below. 

26. The ho?iied spring. Cf. Milton, 77 Pens. 142 : "the bee with honied 
thigh ;" and Lye. 140 : "the honied showers." 

" There has of late arisen," says Johnson in his Life of Gray, "a prac- 
tice of giving to adjectives derived from substantives the termination of 
participles, such as the cultured plain, the daisied bank ; but I am sorry 
to see in the lines of a scholar like Gray the honied spring." But, as we 
have seen, honied is found in Milton ; and Shakespeare also uses it in 
Hep. V. i. 1 : " honey'd sentences." Mellitus is used by Cicero, Horace, 
and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville 
has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our sub- 
stances into verbs, participles, and participial adjectives is of the very 
essence of our tongue, derived from its Saxon origin, and a main source 
of its energy and richness." 

27. The liquid noon. Gray quotes Virgil, Geo. iv. 59 : " Nare per aesta- 
tem liquidam." 

30. Quick-glancing to the sun. Gray quotes Milton, P. L. vii. 405 : 

"Sporting with quick glance, 
Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold." 

31. Gray here quotes Green, Grotto : " While insects from the threshold 

* The reading of the folio of 1623 is : 

" I know a banke where the wilde time blowes, 
Where Oxslips and the nodding Violet growes, 
Quite ouer-cannoped with luscious woodbine." 

Dyce and some other modern editors read, 

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine." 



ODE ON THE SPRING. gy 

preach." In a letter to Walpole, he says : " I send you a bit of a thing 
for two reasons : first, because it is of one of your favourites, Mr. M. 
Green ; and next, because I would do justice. The thought on which 
my second Ode turns [this Ode, afterwards placed first by Gray] is mani- 
festly stole from hence ; not that I knew it at the time, but having seen, 
this many years before, to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, and. 
forgetting the Author, I took it for my own." Then comes the quotation 
from Green's Grotto. The passage referring to the insects is as follows : 

"To the mind's ear, and inward sight, 
There silence speaks, and shade gives light : 
While insects from the threshold preach, 
And minds dispos'd to musing teach; 
Proud of strong limbs and painted hues, 
They perish by the slightest bruise ; 
Or maladies begun within 
Destroy more slow life' s frail machine : 
From maggot-youth, thro' change of state, 
They feel like us the turns of fate : 
Some born to creep have liv'd to fly, 
And chang'd earth's cells for dwellings high: 
And some that did their six wings keep, 
Before they died, been forc'd to creep. 
They politics, like ours, profess ; 
The greater prey upon the less. 
Some strain on foot huge loads to bring, 
Some toil incessant on the wing: 
Nor from their vigorous schemes desist 
Till death ; and then they are never mist. 
Some frolick, toil, marry, increase, 
Are sick and well, have war and peace ; 
And broke with age in half a day, . 
Yield to successors, and away." 

47. Painted plumage. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 118 : "His painted 
wings ;" and Milton, P. L. vii. 433 : 

" From branch to branch the smaller birds with song 
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings." 

See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 243, and ^En. iv. 525 : " pictaeque volucres ;' 
and Phaedrus, Pad. iii. 18: "pictisque plumis." 




9 8 NOTES. 



ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT. 

This ode first appeared in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 274, with some 
variations noticed below. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the 
china vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the ode 
for an inscription. 

In a letter to Walpole, dated March 1, 1747, Gray refers to the subject 
of the ode in the following jocose strain : "As one ought to be particu- 
larly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would 
be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow, and the sin- 
cere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. 
I knew Zara and Selima (Selima, was it? or Fatima ?), or rather I knew 
them both together ; for I cannot justly say which was which. Then as 
to your handsome Cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at 
a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes 
best ; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that 
is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you 
do not think me so ill-bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest 
in the survivor ; oh no ! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine 
to be sure it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. 
Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not 
begin to cry, 

Tempus inane peto, requiem spatiumque doloris. 

"... Heigh ho ! I feel (as you to be sure have done long since) that I 
have very little to say, at least in prose. Somebody will be the better for 
it ; I do not mean you, but your Cat, feue Mademoiselle Selime, whom 
I am about to immortalize for one week or fortnight, as follows : [the 
Ode follows, which we need not reprint here]. 

" There's a poem for you, it is rather too long for an Epitaph." 

2. Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, Town Eclogues : 

" Where the tall jar erects its stately pride, 
With antic shapes in China's azure dyed." 

3. The azure flowers that blow. Johnson and Wakefield find fault with 
this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usage allows. In the 
Progress of Poesy, i. 1, we have again : " The laughing flowers that round 
them blow." Cf. Comus, 992 : 

" Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odorous banks that blow 
Flowers of more mingled hue 
Than her purfled scarf can shew." 



ODE ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT. gg 

4. Tabby. For the derivation of this word from the French tabis, a kind 
of silk, see Wb. In the 1st ed. (Dodsley) the 5th line preceded the 4th. 

6. The lake. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the whole poem. 

11. Jet. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town in 
Lycia, where the mineral was first obtained. 

14. Two angel forms. The 1st ed. has "two beauteous forms," which 
Mitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of angel and 
genii interfere with each other, and bring different associations to the 
mind." 

15. Tyrian hue. Explained by the "purple" in next line; an allusion 
to the famous Tyrian dye of the ancients. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest, 
142: "with fins of Tyrian dye." 

17. Cf. Virgil, Geo. iv. 274: 

'■''Aureus ipse; sed in foliis, quae plurima circum 
Funduntur, violae sublucet purpura nigrae." 

See also Pope, Windsor Forest, 332 : " His shining horns diffus'd a golden 
glow;" Temple of Fame, 253 : "And lucid amber casts a golden gleam." 

24. The 1st ed. reads " What cat's a foe to fish?" and in the next line 
one MS. has "with eyes intent." 

31. Eight times. Alluding to the proverbial " nine lives " of the cat. 

34. No dolphin came. An allusion to the story of Arion, who when 
thrown overboard by the sailors for the sake of his wealth was borne 
safely to land by a dolphin. 

No Nereid stirr'd. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 50 : 

"Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas?" 

35, 36. The reading of 1st ed. is, 

" Nor cruel Tom nor Harry heard. 
What favourite has a friend?" 

40. One MS. has "Not all that strikes," etc. 

42. Nor all that glisters gold. A favourite proverb with the old English 
poets. Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 16430 : 

"But all thing which that shineth as the gold 
Ne is no gold, as I have herd it told;" 

Spenser, F. Q. ii. 8, 14 : 

"Yet gold all is not, that doth golden seeme; ,, 

Shakes. M. of V. ii. 7 : 

"All that glisters is not gold; 
Often have you heard that told ;" 

Dryden, Hind and Panther : 

"All, as they say, that glitters is not gold." 

Other examples might be given. Glisten is not found in Shakes, or Mil- 
ton, but both use glister several times. See W. T. iii. 2 ; Rich. II. iii. 3 ; 
T. A, ii. I, etc. ; Lycidas, 79 ; Comus, 219 ; P. L. iii. 550 ; iv. 645, 653, etc, 

L.ofC. 




ETON COLLEGE. 



ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON 

COLLEGE. 

This, as Mason informs us, was the first English* production of Gray's 
that appeared in print. It was published, in folio, in 1747 ; and appeared 
again in Dodsley's Collection, vol. ii. p. 267, without the name of the 
author. 

Hazlitt [Lectures on English Poets) says of this Ode : " It is more me- 
chanical and commonplace [than the Elegy] ; but it touches on certain 
strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our latest breath. 
No one ever passes by Windsor's ' stately heights,' or sees the distant 
spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He deserves 
that we should think of him ; for he thought of others, and turned a 
trembling, ever-watchful ear to ' the still sad music of humanity.' " 

The writer in the North American Review (vol. xcvi.), after referring 
to the publication of this Ode, which, " according to the custom of the time, 
was judiciously swathed in folio," adds : 

* A Latin poem by him, a " Hymeneal " on the Prince of Wales's Marriage, had ap- 
peared in the Cambridge Collection in 1736. 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. IO i 

" About this time Gray's portrait was painted, at Walpole's request ; 
and on the paper which he is represented as holding, Walpole wrote the 
title of the Ode, with a line from Lucan : 

'Nee licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.' 

The poem met with very little attention until it was republished in 1751, 
with a few other of his Odes. Gray, in speaking of it to Walpole, in 
connection with the Ode to Spring, merely says that to him ' the latter 
seems not worse than the former.' But the former has always been the 
greater favourite — perhaps more from the matter than the manner. It is 
the expression of the memories, the thoughts, and the feelings which 
arise unbidden in the mind of the man as he looks once more on the 
scenes of his boyhood. He feels a new youth in the presence of those 
old joys. But the old friends are not there. Generations have come 
and gone, and an unknown race now frolic in boyish glee. His sad, pro- 
phetic eye cannot help looking into the future, and comparing these care- 
less joys with the inevitable ills of life. Already he sees the fury passions 
in wait for their little victims. They seem present to him, like very de- 
mons. Our language contains no finer, more graphic personifications 
than these almost tangible shapes. Spenser is more circumstantial, 
Collins more vehement, but neither is more real. Though but outlines 
in miniature, they are as distinct as Dutch art. Every epithet is a life- 
like picture ; not a word could be changed without destroying the tone 
of the whole. At last the musing poet asks himself, Cui bono? Why 
thus borrow trouble from the future ? Why summon so soon thte coming 
locusts, to poison before their time the glad waters of youth ? 

'Yet ah! why should they know their fate, 
» Since sorrow never comes too late, 

And happiness too quickly flies? 
Thought would destroy their paradise. 
No more ; — where ignorance is bliss, 
'Tis folly to be wise.' 

So feeling and the want of feeling come together for once in the moral. 
The gay Roman satirist — the apostle of indifferentism — reaches the same 
goal, though he has travelled a different road. To Thaliarchus he says : 

'Quid sit futurum eras, fuge quaerere: et 
Quern Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro 
Appone. ' 

The same easy-going philosophy of life forms the key-note of the Ode to 
Leuconoe : 

' Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero ;' 

of that to Quinctius Hirpinus : 

' Quid aetemis minorem 
Consiliis animum fatigas ?' 



of that to Pompeius Grosphus : 

' Laetus in prae< 
Oderit curare.' 

And so with many others. * Take no thought of the morrow.' " 



Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est, 
Oderit curare.' 



102 



NOTES. 



Wakefield translates the Greek motto, " Man is an abundant subject 
of calamity." 

2. That crown the watery glade. Cf. Pope, Windsor Forest ', 128: "And 
lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade." 

4. Her Henry's holy shade. Henry the Sixth, founder of the college. 
Cf. The Bard, ii. 3 : " the meek usurper's holy head ;" Shakes. Rich. III. 
v. 1 : "Holy King Henry;" Id. iv. 4: "When holy Harry died." The 
king, though never canonized, was regarded as a saint. 

5. And ye. Ye " towers ;" that is, of Windsor Castle. Cf. Thomson, 
Summer, 14 1 2 : 

li And now to where 
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow." 

8. Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among. " That is, the turf 
of whose lawn, the shade of whose groves, the flowers of whose mead " 
(Wakefield). Cf. Hamlet, iii. 1 : " The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, 
tongue, sword." 

In Anglo-Saxon and Early English prepositions were often placed after 
their objects. In the Elizabethan period the transposition of the weaker 
prepositions was not allowed, except in the compounds whereto, herewith, 
etc. (cf. the Latin quocum, secum), but the longer forms were still, though 
rarely, transposed (see Shakes. Gr. 203) ; and in more recent writers this 
latter license is extremely rare. Even the use of the preposition after the 
relative, which was very common in Shakespeare's day, is now avoided, 
except in colloquial style. 

9. The hoary Thames. The river-god is pictured in the old classic 
fashion. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 103 : " Next Camus, reverend sire, went 
footing slow." See also quotation from Dryden in note on 21 below. 




THE RIVER-GOD TIBER. 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE, 103 

10. His silver-winding way. Cf. Thomson, Summer , 1425 : " The 
matchless vale of Thames, Fair-winding up," etc. 

12. Ah, fields belov'd in vain! Mitford remarks that this expression 
has been considered obscure, and adds the following explanation : " The 
poem is written in the character of one who contemplates this life as a 
scene of misfortune and sorrow, from whose fatal power the brief sun- 
shine of youth is supposed to be exempt The fields are beloved as the 
scene of youthful pleasures, and as affording the promise of happiness to 
come ; but this promise never was fulfilled. Fate, which dooms man to 
misery, soon overclouded these opening prospects of delight. That is in 
vain beloved which does not realize the expectations it held out. No 
fruit but that of disappointment has followed the blossoms of a thought- 
less hope." 

13. Where once my careless childhood strayed. Wakefield cites Thomson, 
Winter, 6 : 

"with frequent foot 
Pleas' d have I, in my cheerful morn of life, 
When nurs'd by careless Solitude I liv'd, 
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, 
Pleas' d have I wander'd," etc. 

15. That from ye blow. In Early English j^ is nominative, you accusa- 
tive (objective). This distinction, though observed in our version of the 
Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan writers {Shakes. Gr. 236), as it has 
occasionally been by the poets even to our own day. Cf. Shakes. Hen. 
VIII. iii. 1 : " The more shame for ye ; holy men I thought ye ;" Milton, 
Comus, 216: "I see ye visibly," etc. Dryden, in a couplet quoted by 
Guest, uses both forms in the same line : 

"What gain you by forbidding it to tease ye? 
It now can neither trouble you nor please ye." 

19. Gray quotes Dryden, Fable on Pythag. Syst. : " And bees their honey 
redolent of spring." 

21. Say, father Thames, etc. This invocation is taken from Green's 
Grotto : 

" Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace 
Gives leave to view, what beauties grace 
Your flowery banks, if you have seen." 

Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 232 : " Old father Thames raised up his 
reverend head." 

Dr. Johnson, in his hypercritical comments on this Ode, says : " His 
supplication to Father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses 
the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of 
knowing than himself." To which Mitford replies by asking, "Are we 
by this rule to judge the following passage in the twentieth chapter of 
Rasselas ? ' As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes on 
the river that flowed before her : "Answer," said she, "great Father of 
Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invo- 
cation of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me, if thou waterest, 
through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear 
the murmurs of complaint." ' " 



104 NOTES. 

23. Margent green. Cf. Comus, 232 : " By slow Maerander's margent 
green." 

24. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 233 : " To Virtue, in the paths of 
Pleasure, trod." 

26. Thy glassy wave. Cf. Comics, 861 : " Under the glassy, cool, trans- 
lucent wave." 

27. The captive linnet. The adjective is redundant and " proleptic," as 
the bird must be " enthralled" before it can be called "captive." 

29. In the MS. this line reads, "To chase the hoop's elusive speed," 
which seems to us better than the revised form in the text 

30. Cf. Pope, Dunciad,\v. 592 : "The senator at cricket urge the ball." 
37. Cf. Cowley, Ode to Hobbes, iv. 7 : "Till unknown regions it descries." 
40. A fearful joy. Wakefield quotes Matt, xxviii. 8 and Psalms ii. 11. 

Cf. Virgil, sEn. i. 513 : 

"Obstupuit simul ipse simul perculsus Achates 
Laetitiaque metuque." 

See also Lear, v. 3 : " 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief." 

44. Cf. Pope, Eloisa, 209 : " Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ;" 
and Essay on Man, iv. 168 : " The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart- 
felt joy." 

45. Buxoni. Used here in its modern sense. It originally meant pliant, 
flexible, yielding (from A. S. biigan, to bow) ; then, gay, frolicsome, lively ; 
and at last it became associated with the " cheerful comeliness " of vigor- 
ous health. Chaucer has " buxom to ther lawe," and Spenser (State of 
Ireland), " more tractable and buxome to his government." Cf. also E. Q. 
i. 11,37 : "the buxome aire ;" an expression which Milton uses twice (P. 
L. ii. 842, v. 270). In H Allegro, 24 : " So buxom, blithe, and debonaire;" 
the only other instance in which he uses the word, it means sprightly or 
" free " (as in " Come thou goddess, fair and free," a few lines before). Cf. 
Shakes. Pericles, i. prologue : 

" So buxom, blithe, and full of face, 
As heaven had lent her all his grace." 

The word occurs nowhere else in Shakes, except Hen. V. iii. 6 : " Of 
buxom valour ;" that is, lively valour. 

Dr. Johnson appears to have had in mind the original meaning of 
buxom in his comment on this passage : " His epithet buxom health is 
not elegant ; he seems not to understand the word." 

47. Lively cheer. Cf. Spenser, Shep. Kal. Apr. : " In either cheeke de- 
peincten lively chere ;" Milton, Ps. lxxxiv. 27 : " With joy and gladsome 
cheer." 

49. Wakefield quotes Milton, P. L. v. 3 : 

"When Adam vvak'd, so custom' d; for his sleep 
Was airy light, from pure digestion bred, 
And temperate vapours bland." 

51. Regardless of their doom. Collins, in the first manuscript of his 
Ode on the Death of Col. Ross, has 



ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 105 

" E'en now, regardful of his doom, 
Applauding Honour haunts his tomb."* 

55. Yet see, etc. Mitford cites Broome, Ode on Melancholy : 

" While round stern ministers of fate, 
Pain and Disease and Sorrow, wait ;" 

and Otway, Alcibiades, v. 2 : " Then enter, ye grim ministers of fate." 
See also Progress of Poesy, ii. 1 : " Man's feeble race," etc. 

59. Murthei-ous. The obsolete spelling of murderous, still used in 
Gray's time. 

61. The fury Passions. The passions, fierce and cruel as the mythical 
Furies. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 167 : " The fury Passions from that 
blood began." 

66. Mitford quotes Spenser, F. Q. : 

"But gnawing Jealousy out of their sight, 
Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bite." 

68. Wakefield quotes Milton, Sonnet to Mr. Lawes : " With praise 
enough for Envy to look wan." 

69. Grim-visag V, comfortless Despair. Cf. Shakes. Rich. III. i. 1 : 
" Grim-visag'd War ;" and C.ofE.v.i: " grim and comfortless Despair." 

76. Unkindness 1 altered eye. " An ungraceful elision " of the possessive 
inflection, as Mason calls it. Cf. Dryden, Hind a?td Panther, iii. : " Af- 
fected Kindness with an alter'd face." 

79. Gray quotes Dryden, Pal. and Arc. : " Madness laughing in his 
ireful mood." Cf. Shakes. He?z. VI. iv. 2 : " But rather moody mad ;" 
and iii. 1 : " Moody discontented fury." 

81. The vale of years. Cf. Othello, iii. 3 : "Declin'd Into the vale of 
years." 

82. Grisly. Not to be confounded with grizzly. See Wb. 

83. The painful family of death. Cf. Pope, Essay on Mail, ii. 118: 
" Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain ;" and Dryden, State of Inno- 
cence, v. 1 : "With all the numerous family of Death." On the whole 
passage cf. Milton, P. L. xi. 477-493. See also Virgil, AL11. vi. 275. 

86. That every labouring smew strains. An example of the " corre- 
spondence of sound with sense." As Pope says (Essay on Criticism, 371), 

"The line too labours, and the words move slow." 

90. Slow-consuming Age. Cf. Shenstone, Love and Ho?iour : " His slow- 
consuming fires." 

95. As Wakefield remarks, we meet with the same thought in Comus, 

359 : 

" Peace, brother, be not over-exquisite 
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils ; 
For grant they be so, while they rest unknown 
What need a man forestall his date of grief, 
And run to meet what he would most avoid?" 

* Mitford gives the first line as " E'en now, regardless of his doom ;" and just below, 
on verse 61, he makes the line from Pope read, " The fury Passions from that flood began." 
We have verified his quotations as far as possible, and have corrected scores of errors 
in them. Quite likely there are some errors in those we have n ot been able to verify. 



io6 



NOTES. 



97. Happiness too swiftly flies. Perhaps a reminiscence of Virgil, Geo. 

iii. 66 : ..,.,• 

''Optima quaeque dies misens mortalibus aevi 

Prima fugit." 

Gosse puts an interrogation mark after fate and a comma after flies 
thus connecting 96 and 97 with what follows ; but the ed. of 1768, though 
it has the interrogation mark after fate, has a period after flies. Out- 
pointing is the modern equivalent of Gray's. 

08 Thought would destroy their paradise. Wakefield quotes Sophocles, 
Ajax, 554 : Ev r<£ <^o^aV yap /ijj&v vSkjtoq [3to<; (" Absence of thought 
is prime felicity "). 

99. Cf. Prior, Ep. to Montague, st. 9 : 

" From ignorance our comfort flows, 
The only wretched are the wise." 

and Davenant, Just Italian : " Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, it 
is not safe to know." 




WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE END OF THE LONG WALK. 




OIKOYME NH XPONOI IAIAZ OAYZZEIA OMI1POS MY0OI 



HOMER ENTHRONED. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 

This Ode, as we learn from one of Gray's letters to Walpole, was 
finished, with the exception of a few lines, in 1755. It was not published 
until 1757, when it appeared with The Bard in a quarto volume, which 
was the first issue of Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In one of his 
letters Walpole writes : " I send you two copies of a very honourable 
opening of my press — two amazing odes of Mr. Gray. They are Greek, 
they are Pindaric, they are sublime, consequently I fear a little obscure ; 
the second particularly, by the confinement of the measure and the nature 
of prophetic vision, is mysterious. I could not persuade him to add more 
notes." In another letter Walpole says : " I found Gray in town last 
week ; he had brought his two odes to be printed. I snatched them out 
of Dodsley's hands, and they are to be the first-fruits of my press." The 
title-page of the volume is as follows : 

ODES I by I Mr. GRAY. | fcQNANTA 2TNET0I2I— Pindar, Olymp. 
II. I PRINTED at STRAWBERRY-HILL, | for R. and J. Dodsley 
in Pall-Mali. | MDCCLVII. 

Both Odes were coldly received at first. " Even my friends," writes 
Gray, in a letter to Hurd, Aug. 25, 1757, "tell me they do not succeed, 



io 8 NOTES. 

and write me moving topics of consolation on that head. In short, I 
have heard of nobody but an Actor [Garrick] and a Doctor of Divinity 
[Warburton] that profess their esteem for them. Oh yes, a Lady of 
quality (a friend of Mason's) who is a great reader. She knew there was 
a compliment to Dryden, but never suspected there was anything said 
about wShakespeare or Milton, till it was explained to her, and wishes 
that there had been titles prefixed to tell what they were about."* In a 
letter to Dr. Wharton, dated Aug. 17, 1757, he says : " I hear we are not 
at all popular. The great objection is obscurity, nobody knows what we 
would be at. One man (a Peer) I have been told of, that thinks the last 
stanza of the 2d Ode relates to Charles the First and Oliver Cromwell ; 
in short, the ^wtrol appear to be still fewer than even I expected." A 
writer in the Critical Review thought that "^Eolian lyre " meant the ^Eolian 
harp. Coleman the elder and Robert Lloyd wrote parodies entitled Odes 
to Obscurity and Oblivion. Gray finally had to add explanatory notes, 
though he intimates that his readers ought not to have needed them.f 

" The metre of these Odes is constructed on Greek models. It is not 
uniform but symmetrical. The nine stanzas of each ode form three groups. 
A slight examination will show that the 1st, 4th, and 7th stanzas are ex- 
actly inter-correspondent ; so the 2d, 5th, and 8th ; and so the remaining 
three. The technical Greek names for these three parts were arpoipri 
(strophe), apriarpocprj (antistrophe), and tTrwcog (epodos) — the Turn, the 
Counter-turn,- and the After-song — names derived from the theatre; the 
Turn denoting the movement of the Chorus from one side of the cpxnorpd 
(orchestra), or Dance-stage, to the other, the Counter-turn the reverse 
movement, the After-song something sung after two such movements. 
Odes thus constructed were called by the Greeks Epodic. Congreve is 
said to have been the first who so constructed English odes. This system 
cannot be said to have prospered with us. Perhaps no English ear would 
instinctively recognize that correspondence between distant parts which 
is the secret of it. Certainly very many readers of The Progress of Poesy 
are wholly unconscious of any such harmony" (Hales). 

* Forster remarks that Gray might have added to the admirers of the Odes ' ' the poor 
monthly critic of The Dunciad" — Oliver Goldsmith, then beginning his London career 
as a bookseller's hack. In a review of the Odes in the London Monthly Review for Sept , 
1757, after citing certain passages of The Bard, he says that they "will give as much 
pleasure to those who relish this species of composition as anything that has hitherto ap- 
peared in our language, the odes of Dryden himself not excepted." 

t In a foot-note he says: " When the author first published this and the following Ode, 
he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes ; but had too 
much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty." 

In a letter to Beattie, dated Feb. 1, 1768, referring to the new edition of his poems, he 
says : " As to the notes, I do it out of spite, because the public did not understand the two 
Odes (which I have called Pindaric), though the first was not very dark, and the second 
alluded to a few common facts to be found in any sixpenny history of England, by way of 
question and answer, for the use of children." And in a letter to Walpole, Feb. 25, 1768, 
he says he has added " certain little Notes, partly from justice (to acknowledge the debt 
where I had borrowed anything^, partly from ill temper, just to tell the gentle reader that 
Edward I. was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor." 

Mr. Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, said that "if the Bard recited his Ode only once to 
Edward, he was sure he could not understand it." When this was told to Gray, he said, 
" If he had recited it twenty times, Edward would not have been a bit wiser; but that was 
no reason why Mr. Fox should not." 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



109 



**k 



A '<u 




ALC^EUS AND SAPPHO. FROM A PAINTING ON A VASE. 

1. Awake, ALolian lyre. The blunder of the Critical Reviewers who 
supposed the " harp of ^Eolus " to be meant led Gray to insert this note : 
" Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, AloXlg 
/jo\7rr/, AioXlSeg %opdai, AloXiSujv irvoal avXwv, .^Eolian song, yEolian 
strings, the breath of the JEoYmn flute." 

Cf. Cowley, Ode of David: " Awake, awake, my lyre !" Gray himself 
quotes Ps. lvii. 8. The first reading of the line in the MS. was, "Awake, 
my lyre : my glory, wake." Gray also adds the following note : " The 
subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources 
of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described ; 
its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and 
barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and 
its more rapid and irresistible course, when swollen and hurried away 
by the conflict of tumultuous passions." 

2. And give to rapture. The first reading of the MS. was " give to 
transport." 

3. Helicon's harmonious springs. In the mountain range of Helicon, in 
Bceotia, there were two fountains sacred to the Muses, Aganippe and 
Hippocrene, of which the former was the more famous. 

7. Cf. Pope, Hor. Epist. ii. 2, 171 : 

" Pour the full tide of eloquence along, 
Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong ;" 

and Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1 1 : 

"The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow;" 

also Thomson, Liberty, ii. 257 : 

tc In thy full language speaking mighty things, 
Like a clear torrent close, or else diffus'd 
A broad majestic stream, and rolling on 
Through all the winding harmony of sound." 



HO NOTES. 

9. Cf. Shenstone, Inscr. : " Verdant vales and fountains bright ;" also 
Virgil, Geo. i. 96 : " Flava Ceres;" and Homer, //. v. 499 : £av$r) ^rjjirirrip. 

10. Rolling. Spelled "rowling" in the 1st and other early editions. 
Amain. Cf. Lycidas, in : "The golden opes, the iron shuts amain ;" 

P. L. ii. 165 : "when we fled amain," etc. Also Shakes. Temp. iv. 1 : 
" Her peacocks fly amain," etc. The word means literally with main 
(which we still use in "might and main "), that is, with force or strength. 
Cf. Horace, Od. iv. 2, 8: " Immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore." 
Ii. The first MS. reading was, " With torrent rapture see it pour." 

12. Cf. Dryden, Virgil's Geo. i. : "And rocks the bellowing voice of 
boiling seas resound ;" Pope, Iliad: " Rocks rebellow to the roar." 

13. " Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The 
thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar " (Gray). 

14. Solemn-breathing airs. Cf. Comus, 555 : " a soft and solemn- 
breathing sound." 

15. Enchanting shell. That is, lyre ; alluding to the myth of the origin 
of the instrument, which Mercury was said to have made from the shell 
of a tortoise. Cf. Collins, Passions, 3 : " The Passions oft, to hear her 
shell," etc. 

17. On Thracia's hills. Thrace was one of the chief seats of the wor- 
ship of Mars. Cf. Ovid, Ars Am. ii. 588 : " Mars Thracen occupat." 
See also Virgil, ALn. iii. 35, etc. 

19. His thirsty lance. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. i. 5, 15 : "his thristy [thirsty] 
blade." 

20. Gray says, " This is a weak imitation of some beautiful lines in the 
same ode ;" that is, in " the first Pythian of Pindar," referred to in the 
note on 13. The passage is an address to the lyre, and is translated by 
Wakefield thus : 

" On Jove's imperial rod the king of birds 
Drops down his flagging wings ; thy thrilling sounds 
Soothe his fierce beak, and pour a sable cloud 
Of slumber on his eyelids : up he lifts 
His flexile back, shot by thy piercing darts. 
Mars smooths his rugged brow, and nerveless drops 
His lance, relenting at the choral song." 

21. The feather" 1 d king. Cf. Shakes. Phoenix and Turtle: 

" Every fowl of tyrant wing, 
Save the eagie, feather'd king." 

23. Dark clouds. The first reading of MS. was "black clouds." 

24. The terror. This is the reading of the first ed. and also of that of 
1768. Most of the modern eds. have "terrors." 

25. " Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the 
body "(Gray). 

26. Tempered. Modulated, "set." Cf. Lycidas, 33 :" Tempered to the 
oaten flute ;" Fletcher, Purple Island: " Tempering their sweetest notes 
unto thy lay," etc. 

27. Idalia? s velvet-green. Idalia, or Idaliuin (Virgil has both forms in 
the ALneid), was a town in Cyprus, and a favourite seat of Venus, who 
was sometimes called Idalia. Pope likewise uses Idalia for the place, 
in his First Pastoral, 65 : "Celestial Venus haunts Idalia's groves." 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. IrI 

Dr. Johnson finds fault with velvet-green, apparently supposing it to be 
a compound of Gray's own making. But Young had used it in his Love 
of Fame : "She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet-green." It is 
also among the expressions of Pope ridiculed in the Alexandriad. 

29. Cytherea was a name of Venus, derived from Cythera, an island in 
the iEgean Sea, one of the favourite residences of Aphrodite, or Venus. 
Cf. Virgil, ALu. i. 680 : "super alta Cythera Aut super Idalium, sacrata 
sede," etc. 

30. With antic Sports. This is the reading of the 1st ed. and also of 
the ed. of 1768. Some eds. have "sport," which is the MS. reading. 

Antic is the same word as antique. The association between what is 
old or old-fashioned and what is odd, fantastic, or grotesque is obvious 
enough. Cf. Milton, II Pens. 158: "With antick pillars massy-proof." 
In S. A. 1325 he uses the word as a noun : " Jugglers and dancers, anticks, 
mummers, mimicks." Shakespeare makes it a verb in A. and C. ii. 7 : 
"the wild disguise hath almost Antick'd us all." 

31. Cf. Thomson, Spring, 835 : " In friskful glee Their frolics play." 

32. 33. Cf. Virgil, j&n. v. 580 foil. 

34. In cadence. The MS. has "the cadence." 

35. Gray quotes Homer, Od.ix. 265: fiapfxapvyac zi)U7o ttocojv' ^avfia^e 
Se ^vf.i(f. Cf. Catullus's "fulgentem plantam." See also Thomson, Spring, 
158: "the many-twinkling leaves Of aspin tall." 

36. Slow -melting strains, etc. Cf. a poem by Barton Booth, published 

in 1733 : 

" Now to a slow and melting air she moves, 
So like in air, in shape, in mien, 
She passes for the Paphian queen ; 
The Graces all around her play, 
The wondering gazers die away ; 
Whether her easy body bend, 
Or her fair bosom heave with sighs ', 
Whether her graceful arms extend, 
Or gently fall, or slowly rise ; 
Or returning or advancing, 
Swimming round, or sidelong glancing, 
Strange force of motion that subdues the soul." 

37. Cf. Dryden, Flower and Leaf, 191 : "For wheresoe'er she turn'd 
her face, they bow'd." 

39. Cf. Virgil, dEn. i. 405 : " Incessu patuit dea." The gods were repre- 
sented as gliding or sailing along without moving their feet. 

41. Purple light of love. Cf. Virgil, JE?i. i. 590 : " lumenque juventae 
Purpureum." Gray quotes Phrynichus, apnd Athenaeum : 

A«/i7TH C 8—1 7T0p(pUpSy(Tl 

iraptiy<n 0wc epojroc. 

See also Dryden, Brit. Red. 133 : "and her own purple light." 

42. " To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was 
given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the day by its 
cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night" (Gray). 

43 foil. See on Eton Coll. 83. Cf. Horace, Od. i. 3, 29-33. 

46. Fond complaint. Foolish complaint. Cf. Shakes. M. of V. iii. 3 : 



112 NOTES. 

"I do wonder, 
Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond 
To come abroad with him at his request ;" 

Milton, S. A. 812 : "fond and reasonless," etc. This appears to be the 
original meaning of the word. In Wiclif's Bible. 1 Cor. i. 27, we have 
" the thingis that ben fonnyd of the world." In Twelfth Night, ii. 2, the 
word is used as a verb = dote : 

" And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, 
As she, mistaken, seems to dote on me." 

49. Hurd quotes Cowley: 

"Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright, 
And Sleep, the lazy owl of night ; 
Asham'd and fearful to appear, 
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere." 

Wakefield cites Milton, Hymn on Nativity, 233 foil. : " The flocking 
shadows pale," etc.. See also P. P. iv. 419-431. 

50. Birds of boding cry. Cf. Green's Grotto: "news the boding night- 
birds tell." 

52. Gray refers to Cowley, Brutus: 

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow, 
Or seen her well-appointed star. 
Come marching up the eastern hill afar." 

The following variations on 52 and 53 are found in the MS. : 

Till fierce Hyperion from afar 
Pours on their scatter'd rear, ~\ 

H " r,S o'er " Sd " his *««-»* shafts ° f «* 

" " " shadowy " ) 
Till " " " " from far 

Hyperion hurls around his, etc. 

The accent of Hyperion is properly on the penult, which is long in quan- 
tity, but the English poets, with rare exceptions, have thrown it back upon 
the antepenult. It is thus in the six instances in which Shakes, uses the 
word : e. g. Hamlet, iii. 4 : " Hyperion's curls ; the front of Jove himself." 
The word does not occur in Milton. It is correctly accented by Drum- 
mond (of Hawthornden), Wand. Muses: 

"That Hyperion far beyond his bed 
Doth see our lions ramp, our roses spread ;" 

by West, Pindar's 01. viii. 22 : 

"Then Hyperion's son, pure fount of day, 
Did to his children the strange tale reveal ;" 

also by Akenside, and by the author of the old play Fuimus Troes (A.D. 

1633) : 

"Blow, gentle Africus, 
Play on our poops when Hyperion's son 
Shall couch in west." 

Hyperion was a Titan, the father of Helios (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), 
and Eos (the Dawn). He was represented with the attributes of beauty 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



"3 



and splendor afterwards ascribed to Apollo. His "glittering shafts " are 
of course the sunbeams, the " lucida tela diei " of Lucretius. Cf. a very 
beautiful description of the dawn in Lowell's Above and Below : 

"'Tis from these heights alone your eyes 
The advancing spears of day can see, 
Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise, 
To break your long captivity." 

We may quote also his Visioii of Sir Launfal : 

" It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 
In his siege of three hundred summers long," etc. 

54. Gray's note here is as follows : " Extensive influence of poetic genius 
over the remotest and most uncivilized nations ; its connection with liber- 
ty and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, 
and Welsh fragments ; the Lapland and American songs.]" He also 
quotes Virgil, ^Vz. vi. 796 : " Extra anni solisque vias," and Petrarch, 
Canz. 2 : " Tutta lontana dal camin del sole." Cf. also Dryden, Thren. 
August. 353: "Out of the solar walk and Heaven's highway;" Ann. 
Mirab. st. 160 : " Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's highway;" Brit. 
Red. : " Beyond the sunny walks and circling year ;" also Pope, Essay on 
Man, i. 102 : " Far as the solar walk and milky way." 

56. Twilight gloom. Wakefield quotes Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 188 : 
" The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn." 

57. Wakefield says, " It almost chills one to read this verse." The 
MS. variations are " buried native's " and " chill abode." 

60. Repeat [their chiefs, etc.]. Sing of them again and again. 

61. In loose numbers, etc. Cf. Milton, HAH. 133 : 

"Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild;" 

and Horace, Od. iv. 2, 11 : 

" numerisque fertur 
Lege solutis." 

62. Their feather -cinctured chiefs. Cf. P. L. ix. 1 1 15: 

" Such of late 
Columbus found the American, so girt 
With feather 5 d cincture." 

64. Glory pursue. Wakefield remarks that this use of a plural verb 
after the first of a series of subjects is in Pindar's manner. Warton com- 
pares Homer, II. v. 774 : 

t)xi poag St/xoac vviifiaXktTov rfde ^Kcij,iavSpog. 

Dugald Stewart (Philos. of Human Mind) says : " I cannot help re* 
marking the effect of the solemn and uniform flow of verse in this exqui- 
site stanza, in retarding the pronunciation of the reader, so as to arrest 
his attention to every successive picture, till it has time to produce its 
proper impression." 

65. Freedom's holy flame. Cf. Akenside, Pleas, oflmag. i. 468 : " Love's 
holy flame." 

H 



ii4 



NOTES. 




THE VALE OF TEMPE. 



66. " Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to Eng- 
land. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of 
Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in 
Italy, and formed their taste there ; Spenser imitated the Italian writers ; 
Milton improved on them : but this school expired soon after the Restora- 
tion, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever 
since " (Gray). 

Delphi's steep. Cf. Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 178: "the steep of Del- 
phos ;" P. L. i. 517: "the Delphian cliff." Both Shakes, and Milton 
prefer the mediaeval form Delphos to the more usual Delphi. Delphi was 
at the foot of the southern uplands of Parnassus which end " in a precip- 
itous cliff, 2000 feet high, rising to a double peak named the Phaedriades, 
from their glittering appearance as they faced the rays of the sun " (Smith's 
A iic. Geog.). 

67. Isles, etc. Cf. Byron : 



The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece ! 
Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 



etc. 



68. Ilissus. This river, rising on the northern slope of Hymettus, 
flows through the east side of Athens. 

69. Mceander^s amber waves. Cf. Milton, P. L. iii. 359 : " Rolls o'er 
Elysian flowers her amber stream; 1 ' P. R. iii. 288: "There Susa by 
Choaspes, amber stream." See also Virgil, Geo. iii. 520 : " Purior electro 
campum petit amnis." Callimachus \Cer. 29) has aXtK-pivov vdup. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. Hj 

70. Ovid, Met. viii. 162, describes the Maeander thus : 

" Non secus ac liquidis Phrygiis Maeandros in arvis 
Ludit, et ambiguo lapsu refluitque fluitque." 

Cf. also Virgil's description of the Mincius {Geo. iii. 15) : 

— "tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat 
Mincius." 

"The first great metropolis of Hellenic intellectual life was Miletus on 
the Maeander. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, Cadmus, Hecataeus, 
etc., were all Milesians" (Hales). 

71 foil. Cf. Milton, Hymn on Nativ. 181 : 

"The lonely mountains o'er, 

And the resounding shore, 
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament ; 

From haunted spring and dale, 

Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent :" etc. 

75. Hallowed fountain. Cf. Virgil, Eel. i. 53 : " fontes sacros." 

76. The MS. has " Murmur'd a celestial sound." 

80. Vice that revels in her chains. In his Ode for Music, 6, Gray has 
" Servitude that hugs her chain." 

81. Hales quotes Collins, Ode to Simplicity: 

"While Rome could none esteem 

But Virtue's patriot theme, 
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band; 

But staid to sing alone 

To one distinguish' d throne, 
And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land." 

84. Nature' 's darling. " Shakespeare " (Gray). Cf. Cleveland, Poems: 

" Here lies within this stony shade 
Nature] s darling; whom she made 
Her fairest model, her brief story, 
In him heaping all her glory." 

On green lap, cf. Milton, Song on May Morning: 

" The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose." 

85. Lucid Avon. Cf. Seneca, Thyest. 129 : " gelido flumine lucidus 
Alpheos." 

86. The mighty mother. That is, Nature. Pope, in the Dunciad y i. 1, 
uses the same expression in a satirical way : 

"The Mighty Mother, and her Son, who brings 
The Smithfield Muses to the ear of kir.gs, 
I sing." 

See also Dryden, Georgics, i. 466 : 

" On the green turf thy careless limbs display, 
And celebrate the mighty mother's day." 

87. The dauntless child. Cf. Horace, Od. iii. 4, 20 : "non sine dis ani- 
mosus infans." Wakefield quotes Virgil, Eel. iv. 60 r. " Incipe, parve 



„6 NOTES. 

puer, risu cognoscere matrem." Mitford points out that the identical ex- 
pression occurs in Sandys's translation of Ovid, Met. iv. 515 : 

" the child 
Stretch'd forth its little arms, and on him smil'd." 

See also Catullus, In Nupt. Jim. et Maul. 216 : 

"Torquatus volo parvulus 
Matris e gremio suae 
Porrigens teneras manus, 
Duke rideat." 

91. These golden keys. Cf. Young, Resig. : 

"Nature, which favours to the few 
All art beyond imparts, 
To him presented at his birth 
The key of human hearts." 

Wakefield cites Com us, 12 : 

"Yet some there be, that with due steps aspir* 
To lay their hands upon that golden key 
That opes the palace of eternity." 

See also Lycidas, 1 10 : 

" Two massy keys he bore of metals twain ; 
The golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 

93. Of horror. A MS. variation is " Of terror." 

94. Or ope the sacred source. In a letter to Dr. Wharton, Sept. 7, 1757, 
Gray mentions, among other criticisms upon this ode, that "Dr. Akenside 
criticises opening a source with a key" But, as Mitford remarks, Akenside 
himself in his Ode on Lyric Poetry has, "While I so late unlock thy purer 
springs" and in his Pleasures of Imagination, " I unlock the springs of 
ancient wisdom." 

95. Nor second he, etc. " Milton " (Gray). 

96. 97. Cf. Milton, P. L. vii. 12 : 

" Up led by thee, 
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed, 
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air." 

98. The flaming bounds, etc. Gray quotes Lucretius, i. 74 : " Flam- 
mantia moenia mundi." Cf. also Horace, Epist. i. 14, 9 : " amat spatiis 
obstantia rumpere claustra." 

99. Gray quotes Ezekiel i. 20, 26, 28. See also Milton, At a Solemn 

Music, 7 : " Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne ;" // Pens. 53 : 

" the fiery-wheeled throne ;" P. I. vi. 758 : 

"Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
Amber, and colours of the showery arch ;" 

and id. vi. 771 : 

" He on the wings of cherub rode sublime, 
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned." 

10 1. Blasted with excess of light, Cf. P. L. iii. 380 : " Dark with ex- 
cessive bright thy skirts appear," 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. u 7 

102. Cf. Virgil, ALn, x. 746 : " in aeternam clauduntur lumina noctem," 
which Dryden translates, ".And closed her lids at last in endless night." 
Gray quotes Homer, Od. viii. 64 : 

'OtpSaXfxujv \iiv djj.Ep<JE ' fiidov d' 7'idtZav doidrjv. 

103. Gray, according to Mason, " admired Dryden almost beyond 
bounds."* 

105. "Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of 
Dryden's rhymes" (Gray). Cf. Pope, Imit. of Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 267 : 

44 Waller was smooth : but Dryden taught to join 
The varying verse, the full-resounding line, 
The long majestic march, and energy divine." 

106. /// thunder cloth? d. Gray quotes Job xxxix. 19. 
108. Bright-eyed. The MS. has "full-plumed." 

no. Gray quotes Cowley, Prophet, thus: " Words that weep, and tears 
that speak ;" but the correct reading is, " Tears which shall understand 
and speak" (Gosse). 

Dugald Stewart remarks upon this line : " I have sometimes thought 
that Gray had in view the two different effects of words already described ; 
the effect of some in awakening the powers of conception and imagina- 
tion; and that of others in exciting associated emotions." 

in. "We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind 
than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day ; for Cowley (who had his merit) 
yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope 
is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has 
touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some of his cho- 
ruses ; above all in the last of Caractacus : 

'Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread!' etc." (Gray). 

113. Wakes thee now. Cf. Elegy, 48 : " Or wak'd to ecstasy the living 
lyre." 

115. "Awg 7rpoc opvixa Qiiov. Olymp. ii. 159. Pindar compares him- 
self to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamour in 
vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise " (Gray). 

Cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 4, 42 : 

" Like to an Eagle, in his kingly pride 
Soring through his wide Empire of the aire, 
To weather his brode sailes." 

Cowley, in his translation of Horace, Od. iv. 2, calls Pindar " the Theban 
swan " (" Dircaeum cycnum ") : 

" Lo ! how the obsequious wind and swelling air 
The Theban Swan does upward bear." 

117. Azure deep of air. Cf. Euripides, Med. 1294 : i$ aiOtpog fidOog ; 
and Lucretius, ii. 151 : " Aeris in magnum fertur mare." Cowley has 



* In a journey through Scotland in 1765, Gray became acquainted with Beattie, to whom 
he commended the study of Dryden, adding that "if there was any excellence in his own 
numbers, he had learned it wholly from the great poet." 



Ii8 NOTES. 

" Row through the trackless ocean of air ;" and Shakes. (T. of A. iv. 2), 
"this sea of air." 

118, 119. The MS. reads: 

"Yet when they first were open'd on the day 
Before his visionary eyes would run.' ' 

D. Stewart (Phi/os. of Human Mind) remarks that "Gray, in describing 
the infantine reveries of poetical genius, has fixed with exquisite judg- 
ment on that class of our conceptions which are derived from visible 
objects.'' objects." F 'or forms the MS. has "shapes." 

120. With orient hues. Cf. Milton, P. L. i. 546 : "with orient colours 
waving." 

122. The MS. has " Yet never can he fear a vulgar fate." 

123. Cf. K. Philips : " Still shew'd how much the good outshone the 
great." 

We append, as a curiosity of criticism, Dr. Johnson's comments on this 
ode, from his Lives of the Poets. The Life of Gray has been called "the 
worst in the series," and perhaps this is the worst part of it :* 

" My process has now brought me to the wonderful * Wonder of Won- 
ders,' the two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar ignorance or 
common-sense at first universally rejected them, many have been since 
persuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of those that are 
willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the 
first stanza of ' The Progress of Poetry.' 

" Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of spreading sound 
and running water. A * stream of music ' may be allowed ; but where 
does 'music,' however 'smooth and strong,' after having visited the 
1 verdant vales, roll down the steep amain,' so as that ' rocks and nod- 
ding groves rebellow to the roar ?' If this be said of music, it is non- 
sense ; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose. 

* Sir James Mackintosh well says of Johnson's criticisms: " Wherever understanding 
alone is sufficient for poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are generally right. But 
the beauties of poetry must ho. felt before their causes are investigated. There is a poetical 
sensibility, which in the progress of the mind becomes as distinct a power as a musical ear 
or a picturesque eye. Without a considerable degree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a 
man of the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry as it is for 
a blind man to speak of colours. To adopt the warmest sentiments of poetry, to realize 
its boldest imagery, to yield to every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of 
fancy, to retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly foreign from 
the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As in his judgment of life and 
character, so in his criticism on poetry, he was a sort of Free-thinker. He suspected the 
refined of affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it for granted that 
the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and 
Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty 
and vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse ; beyond that school his unforced admiration 
perhaps scarcely soared ; and his highest effort of criticism was accordingly the noble 
panegyric on Dryden." 

W. H. Prescott, the historian, also remarks that Johnson, as a critic, "was certainly 
deficient in sensibility to the more delicate, the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He 
analyzes verse in the cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma which consti- 
tuted its principal charm escapes in the decomposition. By this kind of process, some of 
the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of 
Collins, and of Milton too, are rendered sufficiently vapid." 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



119 



" The second stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is unworthy 
of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy to his common- 
places. 

" To the third it may likewise be objected that it is drawn from mythol- 
ogy, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia's 
'velvet-green' has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn 
from Nature ennobles Art ; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art 
degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. 
' Many-twinkling ' was formerly censured as not analogical ; we may 
say ' many-spotted,' but scarcely ' many-spotting.' This stanza, however, 
has something pleasing. 

" Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell something, 
and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion ; the second 
describes well enough the universal prevalence of poetry ; but I am afraid 
that the conclusion will not arise from the premises. The caverns of the 
North and the plains of Chili are not the residences of * Glory and gener- 
ous Shame.' But that Poetry and Virtue go always together is an opinion 
so pleasing that I can forgive him who resolves to think it true. 

" The third stanza sounds big with ' Delphi,' and '^gean,' and ' Ilissus,' 
and ' Maeander,' and with ' hallowed fountains,' and ' solemn sound ;' but 
in all Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrous splendour which we wish 
away. His position is at last false : in the time of Dante and Petrarch, 
from whom we derive our first school of poetry, Italy was overrun by 
1 tyrant power ' and ' coward vice ;' nor was our state much better when 
we first borrowed the Italian arts. 

" Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shake- 
speare. What is said of that mighty genius is true ; but it is not said 
happily : the real effects of this poetical powei are put out of sight by the 
pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill the mind, fiction is 
worse than useless ; the counterfeit debases the genuine. 

" His account of Milton's blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in 
the formation of his poem, a supposition surely allowable, is poetically 
true and happily imagined. But the car of Dryden, with his two coursers, 
has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be 
placed." 




PINDAR 




EDWARD I. 



THE BARD. 



" This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward 
the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all 
the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death " (Gray). 

The original argument of the ode, as Gray had set it down in his 
commonplace-book, was as follows : " The army of Edward I., as they 
march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are suddenly 
stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit 
of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human, reproaches 
the king with all the desolation and misery which he had brought on 
his country ; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race, and with 
prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the 
noble ardour of poetic genius in this island ; and that men shall never 
be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to 
expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and op- 
pression. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, 
and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its feet." 

Mitford, in his " Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode : " The 
tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an 



THE BARD. 12 1 

act of tyranny and wickedness ; to denounce on Edward, in his person 
and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre 
of the bards ; to convince him that neither his power nor situation could 
save him from the natural and necessary consequences of his guilt ; that 
not even the virtues which he possessed could atone for the vices with 
which they were accompanied : 

'Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail, 
Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail.' 

This is the real tendency of the poem ; and well worthy it was of being 
adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images and 
beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral feel- 
ing increases as we approach the close ; how the poem rises in dignity ; 
and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject ascends. The 
Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his departed 
brethren and his desolate country. This despondence, however, has 
given way to emotions of a nobler and more exalted nature. What can 
be more magnificent than the vision which opens before him to display 
the triumph of justice and the final glory of his cause? And it may be 
added, what can be more forcible or emphatic than the language in which 
it is conveyed ? 

'But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height, 
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? 
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! 
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! " 

The fine apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin completes the picture of 
exultation : 

* Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear ; 
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.' 

The triumph of justice, therefore, is now complete. The vanquished 
has risen superior to his conqueror, and the reader closes the poem with 
feelings of content and satisfaction. He has seen the Bard uplifted both 
by a divine energy and by the natural superiority of virtue ; and the 
conqueror has shrunk into a creature of hatred and abhorrence : 

1 Be thine despair, and sceptred care ; 
To triumph, and to die, are mine.' " 

With regard to the obscurity of the poem, the same writer remarks that 
" it is such only as of necessity arises from the plan and conduct of a 
prophecy." " In the prophetic poem," he adds, " one point of history 
alone is told, and the rest is to be acquired previously by the reader ; 
as in the contemplation of an historical picture, which commands only 
one moment of time, our memory must supply us with the necessary 
links of knowledge ; and that point of time selected by the painter must 
be illustrated by the spectator's knowledge of the past or future, of the 
cause or the consequences." 

He refers, for corroboration of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in his 
" Philosophy of Rhetoric," says : " I know no style to which darkness of 
a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical : many reasons might 



I22 NOTES. 

be assigned which render it improper that prophecy should be perfectly 
understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we are certain that a 
prediction may be very dark before the accomplishment, and yet so plain 
afterwards as scarcely to admit a doubt in regard to the events suggested. 
It does not belong to critics to give laws to prophets, nor does it fall with- 
in the confines of any human art to lay down rules for a species of com- 
position so far above art. Thus far, however, we may warrantably observe, 
that when the prophetic style is imitated in poetry, the piece ought, as much 
as possible, to possess the character above mentioned. This character, 
in my opinion, is possessed in a very eminent degree by Mr. Gray's ode 
called The Bard. It is all darkness to one who knows nothing of the 
English history posterior to the reign of Edward the First, and all light 
to one who is acquainted with that history. But this is a kind of writing 
whose peculiarities can scarcely be considered as exceptions from ordi- 
nary rules.' ' 

Farther on in the same essay, Mitford remarks : " The skill of Gray 
is, I think, eminently shown in the superior distinctness with which he 
has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be ac- 
complished ; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has 
insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper shadow- 
ings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of Edward the 
Second. In that the Bard has pointed out the very night in which he is 
to be destroyed ; has named the river that flowed around his prison, and 
the castle that was the scene of his sufferings : 

' Mark the year, and mark the night, 
When Severn shall re-echo with affright 
The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, 
Shrieks of an agonizing king.' 

How different is the imagery when Richard the Second is described ; 
and how indistinctly is the luxurious monarch marked out in the form 
of the morning, and his country in the figure of the vessel ! 

'The swarm that in thy noontide beam were bora? 
Gone to salute the rising morn. 
Fair laughs the morn,' etc. 

The last prophecy is that of the civil wars, and of the death of the two 
young princes. No place, no name is now noted : and all is seen through 
the dimness of figurative expression : 

1 Above, below, the rose of snow, 

Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: 
The bristled boar in infant gore 
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.'" 

Hales remarks : " It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the 
tradition on which The Bard is founded is wholly groundless. Edward 
I. never did massacre Welsh bards. Their name is legion in the begin- 
ning of the 14th century. Miss Williams, the latest historian of Wales, 
does not even mention the old story."* 

* The Saturday Review, for June 19, 1875, in the article from which we have else- 
where quoted (p. 79, foot-note), refers to this point as follows : 



THE BARD. I23 

1. A good example of alliteration. 

2. Cf. Shakes. K. John, iv. 2 : " and vast confusion waits." 

4. Gray quotes K. John, v. 1 : " Mocking the air with colours idly 
spread." 

5. " The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, 
forming a coat of mail that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to 
every motion " (Gray). 

Cf. Robert of Gloucester : " With helm and hauberk ;" and Dryden, 
Pal. and Arc. iii. 603 : " Hauberks and helms are hewed with many a 
wound." 

7. Nightly. Nocturnal, as often in poetry. Cf. 77 Pens. 84, etc. 

9. The crested pride. Gray quotes Dryden, Indian Queen : "The crested 
adder's pride." 

11. "Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous 
tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigia?i-eryri : it included all the 
highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river 
Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the castle of Conway, built by King 
Edward the First, says: 'Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis 
Erery ;' and Matthew of Westminster (ad ann. 1283), ' Apud Aberconway 
ad pedes montis Snovvdoniae fecit erigi castrum forte ' " (Gray). 

It was in the spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way 
among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes 
and heights intact until his death in the preceding December. The sur- 
render of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened 
a way for the invader ; and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at 
once advanced by it (Hales). 

The epithet shaggy is highly appropriate, as Lei and (Itin.) says that 
great woods clothed the mountain in his time. Cf. Dyer, Ruins of Rome: 

"as Britannia's oaks 
On Merlin's mount, or Snowdon's rugged sides, 
Stand in the clouds." 

See also Lycidas, 54 1 "Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high ;" and P. L. 
vi. 645 : " the shaggy tops." 

" Gray was one of the first writers to show that earlier parts of English history were 
not only worth attending to, but were capable of poetic treatment. We can almost for- 
give him for dressing up in his splendid verse a foul and baseless calumny against Edward 
the First, when we remember that to most of Gray's contemporaries Edward the First 
must have seemed a person almost mythical, a benighted Popish savage, of whom there 
was very little to know, and that little hardly worth knowing. Our feeling towards Gray 
in this matter is much the same as our feeling towards Mitford in the matter of Greek 
history. We are angry with Mitford for misrepresenting Demosthenes and a crowd of 
other Athenian worthies, but we do not forget that he was the first to deal with Demos- 
thenes and his fellows, neither as mere names nor as demi-gods, but as real living men 
like ourselves. It was a pity to misrepresent Demosthenes, but even the misrepresenta- 
tion was something; it showed that Demosthenes could be made the subject of human 
feeling one way or another. It is unpleasant to hear the King whose praise it was that 

'Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus,' 

spoken of as 'ruthless,' and the rest of it. But Gray at least felt that Edward was a real 
man, while to most of his contemporaries he could have been little more than ' the figure 
of an old Gothic king,' such as Sir Roger de Coverley looked when he sat in Edward's 
own chair." 



124 



NOTES. 



13. Stout Gloster. " Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of 
Gloucester and Hereford, son-in-law to King Edward " (Gray). He had, 
in 1282, conducted the war in South Wales ; and after overthrowing the 
enemy near Llandeilo Fawr, had reinforced the king in the northwest. 

14. Mortimer. " Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore " (Gray). 
It was by one of his knights, named Adam de Francton, that Llewellyn, 
not at first known to be he, was slain near Pont Orewyn (Hales). 

On quivering lance, cf. Virgil, ALn. xii. 94 : " hastam quassatque tre- 
mentem." 

15. On a rock whose haughty brow. Cf. Daniel, Civil Wars : "A huge 
aspiring rock, whose surly brow." 

The rock is probably meant for Penmaen-mawr, the northern termina- 
tion of the Snowdon range. It is a mass of rock, 1545 feet high, a few 
miles from the mouth of the Conway, the valley of which it overlooks. 
Towards the sea it presents a rugged and almost perpendicular front. 
On its summit is Braich-y-Dinas, an ancient fortified post, regarded as 
the strongest hold of the Britons in the district of Snowdon. Here the 
reduced bands of the Welsh army were stationed during the negotia- 
tion between their prince Llewellyn and Edward I. Within the inner 
enclosure is a never-failing well of pure water. The rock is now pierced 
with a tunnel 1890 feet long for the Chester and Holyhead railway. 

17. Rob' 'd in the sable garb of woe. It would appear that Wharton had 
criticised this line, for in a letter to him, dated Aug.21, 1757, Gray writes: 
" You may alter that 'Robed in the sable,' etc., almost in your own words, 
thus, 

' With fury pale, and pale with woe, 
Secure of Fate, the Poet stood,' etc. 

Though haggard, which conveys to you the idea of a witch, is indeed only 
a metaphor taken from an unreclaimed hawk, which is called a haggard, 
and looks wild and farouche, and jealous of its liberty." Gray seems to 
have afterwards returned to his first (and we think better) reading. 

19. "The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, 
repiesenting the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel. There are two 
of these paintings (both believed originals), one at Florence, the other in 
the Duke of Orleans's collection at Paris" (Gray). 

20. Like a meteor. Gray quotes P. L. i. 537 : " Shone like a meteor 
streaming to the wind." 

21. 22. Wakefield remarks : "This is poetical language in perfection ; 
and breathes the sublime spirit of Hebrew poetry, which delights in this 
grand rhetorical substitution." 

23. Desert caves. Cf. Lycidas, 39 : " The woods and desert caves." 

26. Hoarser murmurs. That is, perhaps, with continually increasing 
hoarseness, hoarser and hoarser ; or it may mean with unwonted hoarse- 
ness, like the comparative sometimes in Latin (Hales). 

28. Hoel is called high-born, being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince 
of North Wales, by Finnog, an Irish damsel. He was one of his father's 
generals in his wars against the English, Flemings, and Normans, in South 
Wales ; and was a famous bard, as his poems that are extant testify. 

Soft Llewellyn's lay. " The lay celebrating the mild Llewellyn," says 



THE BARD. 



125 



Hales, though he afterwards remarks that, " looking at the context, it 
would be better to take Llewellyn here for a bard." Many bards cele- 
brated the warlike prowess and princely qualities of Llewellyn. A poem 
by Einion the son of Guigan calls him "a tender-hearted prince;" and 
another, by Llywarch Brydydd y Moch, says : " Llewellyn, though in 
battle he killed with fury, though he burned like an outrageous fire, yet 
was a mild prince when the mead-horns were distributed." In an ode 
by Llygard Gwr he is also called " Llewellyn the mild." 

29. Cadwallo and Urien were bards of whose songs nothing has been 
preserved. Taliessin (see 121 below) dedicated many poems to the latter, 
and wrote an elegy on his death : he was slain by treachery in the year 
560. 

30. That hushed the stormy main. Cf. Shakes. M. N. D. ii. 2 : 

" Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song." 

33. Modred. This name is not found in the lists of the old bards. It may 
have been borrowed from the Arthurian legends ; or, as Mitford suggests, 
it may refer to "the famous Myrddin ab Morvyn, called Merlyn the 
Wild, a disciple of Taliessin, the form of the name being changed for 
the sake of euphony." 

34. Plinlimmon. One of the loftiest oif the Welsh mountains, being 
2463 feet in height. It is really a group of mountains, three of which 
tower high above the others, and on each of these is a carnedd, or pile 
of stones. The highest of the three is further divided into two peaks, 
and on these, as well as on another prominent part of the same height, 
are other piles of stones. These five piles, according to the common tra- 
dition, mark the graves of slain warriors, and serve as memorials of their 
exploits ; but some believe that they were intended as landmarks or mili- 
tary signals, and that from them the mountain was called Pump-lumon 
or Pum-lumon, "the five beacons" — a name somehow corrupted into 
Plinlimmon. Five rivers take their rise in the recesses of Plinlimmon — 
the Wye, the Severn, the Rheidol, the Llyfnant, and the Clywedog. 

35. Arvon' s shore. " The shores of Caernarvonshire, opposite the isle 
of Anglesey " (Gray). Caernarvon, or Caer yn Arvon, means the camp 
in Arvon. 

38. " Camden and others observe that eagles used annually to build their 
aerie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) 
were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryri, or the crags of the eagles. 
At this day (I am told) the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's 
Nest. That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots, and 
the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, etc., can testify ; it even has 
built its nest in the peak of Derbyshire [see Willoughby's Ornithology, 
published by Ray] " (Gray). 

40. Dear as the light. Cf. Virgil, ALn. iv. 31 : "O luce magis dilecta 
sorori." 

41. Dear as the ruddy drops. Gray quotes Shakes. J. C, ii. I : 

"As dear to me as arc the ruddy drops 
That visit my sad heart." 

Cf. also Otway, Venice Preserved: 



i 2 6 NOTES. 

" Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, 
Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee." 

42. Wakefield quotes Pope : "And greatly falling with a fallen state ;* 
and Dryden : "And couldst not fall but with thy country's fate." 
44. Grisly. See on Eton ColL 82. Cf. Lycidas, 52 : 

"the steep 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie." 

48. "See the Norwegian ode that follows" (Gray). This ode {The 
Fatal Sisters, translated from the Norse) describes the Valkyrinr, " the 
choosers of the slain," or warlike Fates of the Gothic mythology, as 
weaving the destinies of those who were doomed to perish in battle. It 
begins thus : 

." Now the storm begins to lower 

(Haste, the loom of hell prepare), 
Iron sleet of arrowy shower 
Hurtles in the darken' d air. 

"Glittering lances are the loom, 

Where the dusky warp we strain, 
Weaving many a soldier's doom, 

Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane. 
******* 

11 Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore, 
Shoot the trembling cords along ; 
Swords, that once a monarch bore, 
Keep the tissue close and strong. 
* * * * * * * 

" (Weave the crimson web of war) 
Let us go, and let us fly, _ 
Where our friends the conflict share, 
Where they triumph, where they die." 

51. Cf. Dryden, Sebastian, i. 1 : 

I have a soul that, like an ample shield, 



Can take in all, and verge enough for more 



11 



55. " Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkeley Castle " (Gray). 
The 1st ed. and that of 1768 have "roofs ;" the modern eds. " roof." 

Berkeley Castle is on the southeast side of the town of Berkeley, on 
a height commanding a fine view of the Severn and the surrounding 
country, and is in a state of perfect preservation. It is said to have been 
founded by Roger de Berkeley soon after the Norman Conquest. About 
the year 11 50 it was granted by Henry II. to Robert Fitzhardinge, Gov- 
ernor of Bristol, who strengthened and enlarged it. On the right of the 
great staircase leading to the keep, and approached by a gallery, is the 
room in which it is supposed that Edward II. was murdered, Sept. 21, 
1327. The king, during his captivity here, composed a dolorous poem, 
of which the following is an extract : 

" Moste blessed Jesu, 
Roote of all vertue, 
Graunte I may the sue, 
In all humylyte, 



THE BARD. 127 

Sen thou for our good, 

Lyste to shede thy blood, 

An stretche the upon the rood, 

For our iniquyte. 

I the beseche, 

Most holsome leche, 

That thou wylt seche 

For me such grace, 

That when my body vyle 

My soule shall exyle 

Thou brynge in short wyle 

It in reste and peace." 

Walpole, who visited the place in 1774, says : " The room shown for 
the murder of Edward II., and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily 
believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at the top of the 
house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, 
and from that descends a large flight of steps, that terminates on strong 
gates ; exactly a situation for a corps de garde." 

56. Cf. Hume's description : " The screams with which the agonizing 
king filled the castle." 

57. She-wolf of France. "Isabel of France, Edward the Second's 
adulterous queen " (Gray). Cf. Shakes. 3 Hen. VI. i. 4 : " She-wolf of 
France, but worse than wolves of France ;" and read the context. 

60. " Triumphs of Edward the Third in France " (Gray). 

61. Cf. Cowley : " Ruin behind him stalks, and empty desolation ;" and 
Oldham, Ode to Homer : 

"Where'er he does his dreadful standard bear, 
Horror stalks in the van, and slaughter in the rear." 

63. For victor the MS. has " conqueror ;" also in next line " the " for 
his ; and in 65, "what . . . what " for no . . . no. 

64. "Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed 
in his last moments by his courtiers and his mistress " (Gray). 

67. " Edward the Black Prince, dead some time before his father " (Gray). 

69. The MS. has " hover'd in thy noontide ray," and in the next line 
" the rising day." 

In Agrippina, a fragment of a tragedy, published among the posthumous 
poems of Gray, we have the same figure : 

"around thee call 
The gilded swarm that wantons in the sunshine 
Of thy full favour." 

71. " Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Froissard and 
other contemporary writers " (Gray). 

For this line and the remainder of the stanza, the MS. has the following : 

" Mirrors of Saxon truth and loyalty, 
Your helpless, old, expiring master view ! 
They hear not : scarce religion does supply 
Her mutter'd requiems, and her holy dew. 
Yet thou, proud boy, from Pomfret's walls shalt send 
A sigh, and envy oft thy happy grandsire's end." 



128 NOTES. 

On the passage as it stands, cf. Shakes. M. of V. ii. 6 : 

11 How like a younger, or a prodigal, 
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay," etc. 

Also Spenser, Visions of World's Vanitie, ix : 

" Looking far foorth into the Ocean wide, 
A goodly ship with banners bravely dight, 
And flag in her top-gallant, I espide 
Through the maine sea making her merry flight. 
Faire blew the winde into her bosome right ; 
And th' heavens looked lovely all the while 
That she did seeme to daunce, as in delight, 
And at her owne felicitie did smile," etc. ; 

and again, Visions of Petrarch, ii. : 

" After, at sea a tall ship did appeare, 
Made all of heben and white yvorie ; 
The sailes of golde, of silke the tackle were : 
Milde was the winde, calme seem'd the sea to be©, 
The skie eachwhere did show full bright and faire : 
With rich treasures this gay ship fraighted was: 
But sudden storme did so turmoyle the aire, 
And tumbled up the sea, that she (alas) 
Strake on a rock, that under water lay, 
And perished past all recoverie." 

See also Milton, S. A. 710 foil. 

72. The azure realm. Cf. Virgil, Ciris, 483 : " Caeruleo pollens con 
junx Neptunia regno." 

73. Note the alliteration. Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirab. st. 151 : 

"The goodly London, in her gallant trim, 
The phoenix-daughter of the vanish' d old, 
Like a rich bride does to the ocean swim, 
And on her shadow rides in floating gold." 

75. Sweeping whirlwind's sway. Cf. the posthumous fragment by Gray 
on Education and Government, 48 : " And where the deluge burst with 
sweepy sway." The expression is from Dryden, who uses it repeatedly; 
as in Geo. i. 483 : " And rolling onwards with a sweepy sway ;" Ov. Met. : 
" Rushing onwards with a sweepy sway ;" ALn. vii. : " The branches 
bend beneath their sweepy sway," etc. 

76. That hush'd in grim repose, etc. Cf. Dryden, Sigismonda and Guis- 
cardo, 242 : 

"So, like a lion that unheeded lay, 
Dissembling sleep, and watchful to betray, 
With inward rage he meditates his prey ;" 

and Absalom and Achitofhel, 447 : 

" And like a lion, slumbering in the way, 
Or sleep dissembling, while he waits his prey." 

77. " Richard the Second (as we are told by Archbishop Scroop and 
the confederate Lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsingham, 
and all the older writers) was starved to death. The story of his assas- 
sination by Sir Piers of Exon is of v much later date " (Gray). 



THE BARD. 



129 



79. Reft of a crown. Wakefield quotes Mallet's ballad of William and 
Margaret : 

" ouch is the robe that kings must wear 
When death has reft their crown." 

82. A baleful smile. The MS. has " A smile of horror on." Cf. Milton, 
P. L. ii. 846 : " Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile." 



1i«m|.| , !ii ;!|||,1 li! flW"i • 
safe 



w 1 .' ' 




THE TRAITORS GATE OF THE TOWER. 

83. " Ruinous wars of York and Lancaster " (Gray). Cf. P. L. vi. 209 : 
"Arms on armour clashing brayed." 

84. Cf. Shakes. 1 Hen. IV. iv. 1 : " Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to 
horse ;" and Massinger, Maid of Honour : " Man to man, and horse 
to horse." 

87. " Henry the Sixth, George Duke of Clarence, Edward the Fifth, 
Richard Duke of York, etc., believed to be murdered secretly in the 
Tower of London. The oldest part of that structure is vulgarly attrib- 
uted to Julius Caesar " (Gray). The MS. has " Grim towers.". 

88. Murther. See on murtherous, p. 105. 

89. His consort. " Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who 
struggled hard to save her husband and her crown " (Gray). 



130 



NOTES. 




HENRY V. 



His father, " Henry the Fifth " (Gray). 

90. The meek usurper. " Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. 
The line of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown" (Gray). 
See on Eton Coll. 4. The MS. has " hallow'd head." 

91. The rose of snow, etc. " The white and red roses, devices of York 
and Lancaster " (Gray). 

Cf. Shakes. 1 Hen. VI. ii. 4 : 

"No, Plantagenet, 
'Tis not for shame, but anger, that thy cheeks 
Blush for pure shame, to counterfeit our roses." 

93. The bristled boar. " The silver boar was the badge of Richard the 
Third ; whence he was usually known in his own time by the name of 
the Boar" (Gray). Scott (notes to Lay of Last Minstrel) says : "The 
crest or bearing of a warrior was often used as a no??i de guerre. Thus 
Richard III. acquired his well-known epithet, ' the Boar of York. 1 " Cf. 
Shakes. Rich. III. iv. 5 : "this most bloody boar;" v. 2 : " The wretched, 
bloody, and usurping boar," etc. 

98. See on 48 above. The " Norwegian ode " ends with line 100. 

99. Half of thy heart. " Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the 
conquest of Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for h«r 



THE BARD. 



*3* 



lord is well known.* The monuments of his regret and sorrow for the 
loss of hert are still to be seen at Northampton, Geddington,Waltham, 
and other places" (Gray). Cf. Horace, Od. i. 3, 8 : "animae dimidium 
meae." 

101 . Nor thus forlorn. In MS. "nor here forlorn ;" in next line, " Leave 
your despairing Caradoc to mourn ;" in 103, "yon black clouds ;" in 104, 
" They sink, they vanish ;" in 105, " But oh ! what scenes of heaven on 
Snowdon's height ;" in 106, " their golden skirts." 

107. Cf. Dryden, State of Innocence -, iv. 1 : "Their glory shoots upon 
my aching sight." 

109. " It was the common belief of the Welsh nation that Xing Arthur 
was still alive in Fairyland, and would return again to reign over Britain " 
(Gray). 

In the MS. this line and the next read thus : 

" From Cambria's thousand hills a thousand strains 
Triumphant tell aloud, another Arthur reigns.' ' 

1 10. " Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied that the Welsh should 
regain their sovereignty over this island; which seemed to be accomplished 
in the house of Tudor " (Gray). 

in. Many a baron bold. Cf. H Allegro, 1 19 : "throngs of knights and 
barons bold." 

The reading in the MS. is, 

" Youthful knights, and barons bold, 
With dazzling helm, and horrent spear." 

112. Their starry fronts. Cf. Milton, Ode on the Passion, 18: "His 
starry front ;" Statius, Theb. 613 : " Heu ! ubi siderei vultus." 

115. A form divine. Elizabeth. Wakefield quotes Spenser's eulogy 
of the queen, Shep. Kal. Apr. : 

"Tell me, have ye seene her angelick face, 

Like Phoebe fayre? 
Her heavenly haveour, her princely grace, 

Can you well compare? 
The Redde rose medled with the White yfere, 
In either cheeke depeincten lively chere ; 

Her modest eye, 

Her Majestie, 
Where have you seene the like but there ?" 

* See Tennyson, Dream of Fair Women : 

"Or her who knew that Love can vanquish Death, 
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, 
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, 
Sweet as new buds in spring." 

t Gray refers to the " Eleanor crosses," erected at the places where the funeral pro- 
cession halted each night on the journey from Hardby, in Nottinghamshire (near Lincoln), 
where the queen died, to Westminster. Of the thirteen (or, as some say, fifteen) crosses 
only three now remain — at Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. The one at Charing 
Cross in London has been replaced by a fac-simile of the original. These monuments 
were all exquisite works of Gothic art, fitting memorials of la chere Reine, " the beloved 
of all England," as Walsingham calls her. 



I3 2 NOTES. 

117. " Speed, relating an audience given by Queen Elizabeth to Paul 
Dzialinski, ambassador of Poland, says : ' And thus she, lion-like rising, 
daunted the malapert orator no less with her stately port and majestical 
deporture, than with the tartnesse of her princelie checkes ' " (Gray). 
The MS. reads "A lion-port, an awe-commanding face." 

121. '* Taliessin, chief of the bards, flourished in the sixth century. His 
works are still preserved, and his memory held in high veneration among 
his countrymen " (Gray). 

As Hales remarks, there is no authority for connecting him with Arthur, 
as Tennyson does in his Holy Grail. 

123. Cf. Congreve, Ode to Lord Godolphin: "And soars with rapture 
while she sings." 

124. The eye of heaven. Wakefield quotes Spenser, F. Q. 1. 3. 4, 

" Her angel's face 
As the great eye of heaven shined bright." 

Cf. Shakes. Rich. II. iii. 2 : " the searching eye of heaven." 

Many-colour d wings. Cf. Shakes. Temp. iv. 1 : " Hail, many-colour'd 
messenger;" and Milton, P. L. iii. 642 : 

" Wings he wore 
Of many a colour' d plume sprinkled with gold." 

126. Gray quotes Spenser, F. Q. Proeme, 9 : 

" Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song." 

128. " Shakespeare " (Gray). Cf. // Penseroso, 102 : " the buskin'd 
stage ;" that is, the tragic stage. 

129. Pleasing pain. Cf. Spenser, F. Q. vi. 9, 10 : " sweet pleasing 
payne ;" and Dryden, Virg. Eel. iii. 171 : " Pleasing pains of love." 

131. " Milton" (Gray). 

133. " The succession of poets after Milton's time" (Gray). 

135. Fond. Foolish. See on Prog, of Poesy \ 46. 

On the couplet, cf. Dekker, If this be not a good play, etc. : 

" Thinkest thou, base lord, 
Because the glorious sun behind black clouds 
Has awhile hid his beams, he's darken'd forever, 
Eclips' d never more to shine ?' ' 

137. Cf. Lycidas, 169 : " And yet anon repairs his drooping head ;" and 
Fletcher, Purple Island, vi. 64 : " So soon repairs her light, trebling her 
new-born raies." 

141. Mitford remarks that there is a passage (which he misquotes, as 
usual) in the Thebaid of Statius (iii. 81) similar to this, describing a bard 
who had survived his companions : 

" Sed jam nudaverat ensem 
Magnanimus vates, et nunc trucis ora tyranni, 
Nunc ferrum adspectans : ' Nunquam tibi sanguinis hujus 
Jus erit, aut magno feries imperdita Tydeo 
Pectora ; vado equidem exsultans et ereptaque fata 
Insequor, et comites feror expectatus ad umbras ; 
Te Superis, fratrique.' Et jam media orsa loquentis 
Abstulerat plenum capulo latus." 



THE BARD. I33 

Cf. also a passage in Pindar {Olymp. i. 184), which Gray seems to have 
had in mind : 

Ell] (76 Tt TOVTOV 

'Yxpov xpovov iraTtlv, sue 
Te ToaoaSe vuccupopoig 
'Ofiikelv, k. t. X. 

143. Cf. Virgil, Eel. viii. 59 : 

" Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas 
Deferar ; extremum hoc munus morientis habeto." 

As we have given Johnson's criticism on The Progress of Poesy, we 
append his comments on this " Sister Ode :" 

" ' The Bard ' appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others 
have remarked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus. Algarotti thinks 
it superior to its original ; and, if preference depends only on the imagery 
and animation of the two poems, his judgment is right. There is in 'The 
Bard ' more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is less 
than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. 
The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible ; but its revival disgusts 
us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. Incredulus odi. 

" To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant's bulk by fabulous 
appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty ; for he that 
forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little 
use ; we are affected only as we believe ; we are improved only as we find 
something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that ' The Bard ' pro- 
motes any truth, moral or political. 

" His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode is finished 
before the ear has learned its measures, and consequently before it can 
receive pleasure from their consonance and recurrence. 

" Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated ; but tech- 
nical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of 
any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the ballad of 
'Johnny Armstrong,' 

'Is there ever a man in all Scotland — ' 

" The initial resemblances, or alliterations, ' ruin, ruthless, helm or hau- 
berk,' are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity. 

" In the second stanza the Bard is well described ; but in the third we 
have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that ' Cad- 
wallo hush'd the stormy main,' and that ' Modred made huge Plinlimmon 
bow his cloud-topt head,' attention recoils from the repetition of a tale 
that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn. 

" The weaving of the winding- sheet he borrowed, as he owns, from the 
Northern Bards ; but their texture, however, was very properly the work 
of female powers, as the act of spinning the thread of life is another my- 
thology. Theft is always dangerous ; Gray has made weavers of slaugh- 
tered bards by a fiction outrageous and incongruous. They are then 
called upon to ' Weave the warp, and weave the woof,' perhaps with no 



134 



NOTES. 



great propriety ; for it is by crossing the w^with the warp that men 
weave the web or piece ; and the first line was dearly bought by the 
admission of its wretched correspondent, ' Give ample room and verge 
enough.' He has, however, no other line as bad. 

" The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think, beyond 
its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and Hunger are not 
alike ; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been 
discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how 'towers are fed.' 
But I will no longer look for particular faults ; yet let it be observed that 
the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example ; but 
suicide is always to be had, without expense of thought." 




Ye towei^ of Julius, London's lasting shame.' 




HEAD OF OLYMPIAN JOVE. 



HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 

This poem. first appeared in Dodsley's Collection, vol. iv., together 
with the " Elegy in a Country Churchyard." In Mason's and Wakefield's 
editions it is called an " Ode," but the title given by the author is as 
above. 

The motto from ^Eschylus is not in Dodsley, but appears in the first 
edition of the poems (1768) in the form given in the text. The best 
modern editions of ^Eschylus have the reading, riv (some, r<£) wciOei 
IiolQoq. Keck translates the passage into German thus : 

"Ihn der uns zur Sinnigkeit 
leitet, ihn der fest den Satz 
Stellet, 'Lehre durch das Leid.'" 

Plumptre puts it into English as follows : 

"Yea, Zeus, who leadeth men in wisdom's way, 
And fixeth fast the law 
Wisdom by pain to gain." 

Cf. Mrs. Browning's Vision of Poets : 

"Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And life is perfected by death." 

I. Mitford remarks : " "Arrj, who may be called the goddess of Adver- 
sity, is said by Homer to be the daughter of Jupiter (77. r. 91 : Trpkafia 
Aide Ovydrrjp "Art], r) Trdvrac, darai). Perhaps, however, Gray only alluded 
to the passage of iEschylus which he quoted, and which describes Afflic- 
tion as sent by Jupiter for the benefit of man." The latter is the more 
probable explanation. 



136 



NOTES. 



2. Mitford quotes Pope, Dunciad, i. 163 : "Then he : 'Great tamer of 
all human art.' " 

3. Torturing hour. Cf. Milton, P. L. ii. 90 : 

" The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 
Inexorable, and the torturing hour, 
Calls us to penance." 

5. Adamantine chains. Wakefield quotes x^Eschylus, Prom. Vinct. vi. : 
AdafiavTiviov Stafiiov iv dppfiKroig irkcaiQ. Cf. Milton, P. L. i. 48 : " In 
adamantine chains and penal fire ;" and Pope, Messiah, 47 : " In ada- 
mantine chains shall Death be bound. 1 ' 

6. Purple tyrants. Cf. Pope, Two Choruses to Tragedy of Brutus : 
"Till some new tyrant lifts his purple hand." Wakefield cites Horace, 
Od. i. 35> 12 : " Purpurei metuunt tyranni." 

8. With pangs unfelt before. Cf. Milton, P. L. ii. 703 : " Strange horror 
seize thee, and pangs unfelt before." For unpitied and alone the MS: has 
" and Misery not thine own." 

9-12. Cf. Bacon, Essays, v. (ed. 1625) : " Certainly, Vertue is like pre- 
tious Odours, most fragrant when they are incensed [that is, burned], or 
crushed :* For Prosperity doth best discover Vice ;t But Adversity doth 
best discover Vertue." Cf. also Thomson : 

" If Misfortune comes, she brings along 
The bravest virtues. And so many great 
Illustrious spirits have convers'd with woe, 
Have in her school been taught, as are enough 
To consecrate distress, and make ambition 
E'en wish the frown beyond the smile of fortune." 

16. Cf. Virgil, Alii. i. 630 : " Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere 
disco." 

18. Folly's idle brood. Cf. the opening lines of II Penseroso : 

" Hence, vain deluding Jovs, 

The brood of Folly, without father bred!" 

20. Mitford quotes Oldham, Ode: "And know I have not yet the 
leisure to be good." 

21. The summer friend. Cf. Geo. Herbert, Temple: "like summer 
friends, flies of estates and sunshine ;" Quarles, Sion's Elegies, xix. : "Ah, 
summer friendship with the summer ends ;" Massinger, Maid of Honour : 
"O summer friendship." See also Shakespeare, T. of A. iii. 6: 

" 2d Lord. The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your 
lordship. 

" Tim on [aside]. Nor more willingly leaves winter • such summer-birds 
are men ;" 
and T. and C. iii. 3 : 

* So in his Apophthegms, 253, Bacon says: "Mr. Bettenham said; that virtuous 
men were like some herbs and spices, that give not their sweet smell till they be broken 
or crushed.' ' 

t Cf. Shakespeare, Julius Ccesar, ii. 1 : " It is the bright day that brings forth the 
adder." 



HYMN TO ADVERSITY. i 37 

"For men, like butterflies, 
Shew not their mealy wings but to the summer." 

Mitford suggests that Gray had in mind Horace, Od. i. 35, 25 : 

"At vulgus infidum et meretrix retro 
Perjura cedit ; diffugiunt cadis 
Cum faece siccatis amici 

Ferre jugum pariter dolosi." 

25. In sable garb. Cf. Milton, 77 Pens. 16 : " O'erlaid with black, staid 
Wisdom's hue." 

28. With leaden eye. Evidently suggested by Milton's description of 
Melancholy, // Pens. 43 : 

" Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes ; 
There, held in holy passion still, 
Forget thyself to marble, till 
With a sad leaden downward cast 
Thou fix them on the earth as fast." 

Mitford cites Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, song 7 : "So leaden eyes ;" 
Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia, 57 : " And stupid eyes that ever lov'd 
the ground ;" Shakespeare, Pericles, i. 2 : " The sad companion, dull- 
eyed Melancholy ;" and L. L. I. iv. 3 : " In leaden contemplation." Cf. 
also The Bard, 69, 70. 

31. To herself severe. Cf. Carew : 

"To servants kind, to friendship dear, 
To nothing but herself severe ;" 

and Dryden : " Forgiving others, to himself severe ;" and Waller : " The 
Muses' friend, unto himself severe." Mitford quotes several other similar 
passages. 

32. The sadly pleasing tear. Rogers cites Dryden's " sadly pleasing 
thought" (Virgil's ALn. x.) ; and Mitford compares Thomson's "lenient, 
not unpleasing tear." 

35. Gorgon terrors. Cf. Milton, P. I. ii. 61 1 : " Medusa with Gorgonian 
terror." 

36-40. Cf. Ode on Eton College, 55-70 and 81-90. 
46-49. Cf. Shakespeare, As You Like It, ii. l : 

" these are counsellors 
That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ;" 



and Mallet 



"Who hath not known ill-fortune, never knew 
Himself, or his own virtue." 



Guizot, in his Cromwell, says : " The effect of supreme and irrevocable 
misfortune is to elevate those souls which it does not deprive of all 
virtue ;" and Sir Philip Sidney remarks : " A noble heart, like the sun, 
showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate." 




" Now rolling down the steep amain, 
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour; 
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar." 

The Progress of Poesy, 10. 



APPENDIX TO NOTES. 



Just as this book is going to press we have received The Quarterly 
Review (London) for January, 1876, which contains an interesting paper 
on " Wordsworth and Gray." After quoting Wordsworth's remark that 
" Gray was at the head of those poets who, by their reasonings, have 
attempted to widen the space of separation between prose and metrical 
composition, and was, more than any other man, curiously elaborate in 
the construction of his own poetic diction," the reviewer remarks : 

" The indictment, then, brought by Wordsworth against Gray is two- 
fold. Gray, it seems, had in the first place a false conception of the 
nature of poetry ; and, secondly, a false standard of poetical diction. To 
begin with the first count, Gray, we are told, sought to widen the space 
of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition. W 7 hat this charge 
amounts to we shall see hereafter. Meantime, did Wordsworth think 
that between prose and poetry there was any line of demarcation at all ? 
In the Preface [to the "Lyrical Ballads"] from which we have quoted we 
read : 

" * There neither is nor can be any essential difference between the 
language of prose and metrical composition. We are fond of tracing the 
resemblance between Poetry and Painting, and accordingly we call them 
sisters ; but where shall we find bonds of connection sufficiently strong to 
typify the connection betwixt prose and metrical composition ?' 

" Now this question admits of a very definite answer. Take the Iliad 
of Homer and a proposition of Euclid. Is it conceivable that the latter 
could have been expressed at all in metre, or the former expressed half 
so well in prose ? If not, what is the reason ? Is it not plain that the 
poem contains a predominant element of imagination and feeling which 
is absolutely excluded from the proposition ? And in the same way it 
may be shown that whenever a man expresses himself properly in metre, 
the subject-matter of his composition belongs to imagination or feeling ; 
whenever he writes in prose his subject belongs to or (if the prose be fic- 
tion) intimately resembles matter of fact. We may decide then with cer- 
tainty that the sphere of poetry lies in Imagination, and that the larger 
the amount of just liberty the Imagination enjoys, the better will be the 
poetry it produces. But then a further question arises, and this is the 
key of the whole position, How far does this liberty extend ? Is Imag- 
ination absolute, supreme, and uncontrolled in its own sphere, or is it 
under the guidance and government of reason? That its dominion is 
not universal is obvious, but of its influence we are all conscious, and 
there is no exaggeration in the eloquent words of Pascal : 



140 



APPENDIX TO NOTES. 



" ' This mighty power, the perpetual antagonist of reason, which delights 
to show its ascendency by bringing her under its control and dominion, 
has created a second nature in man. It has its joys and its sorrows ; its 
health, its sickness ; its wealth, its poverty ; it compels reason, in spite 
of herself, to believe, to doubt, to deny ; it suspends the exercise of the 
senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness ; it has its follies 
and its wisdom ; and the most perverse thing of all is that it fills its vota- 
ries with a complacency more full and complete even than that which 
reason can supply.' 

" If such be the force of Imagination in active life, how absolute must 
be its dominion in poetry ! And absolute it is, if we are to believe 
Wordsworth, who defines poetry to be ' the spontaneous overflow of 
powerful emotion.' This definition coincides well with modern notions 
on the nature of the art. But how different is the view if we turn from 
theory to practice ! It would surely be a serious mistake to describe the 
noblest poems, like the '^Eneid ' or ' Paradise Lost,' as the product of 
mere spontaneous emotion. And even in lyric verse, to which it may 
be said Wordsworth is specially alluding, we find the greatest poets, like 
Pindar and Simonides, composing their odes for set occasions like the 
public games, in honour of persons with whom they were but little ac- 
quainted, and (most significant fact of all) in the expectation of receiving 
liberal rewards. We need not say that such considerations detract nothing 
from the genius of these great poets ; but they prove very conclusively that 
poetry is not what Wordsworth's definition asserts, and what in these days 
it is too often assumed to be, the mere gush of unconscious inspiration. 
The definition of Wordsworth may perhaps suit short lyrics, such as he 
was himself in the habit of composing, but it would be fatal to the claims 
of poetry to rank among the higher arts, for it would exclude that quality 
which, in poetry as in all art, is truly sovereign, Invention. The poet, no 
less than the mechanical inventor, excels by the exercise of reason, by his 
knowledge of the required effect, his power of adapting means to ends, 
and his skill in availing himself of circumstances. Consider for a moment 
the external difficulties which restrict the poet's liberty, and require the 
most vigorous efforts of reason to subdue them. To begin with, in order 
to secure the happy result promised by Horace, 

' Cui lecta potenter erit res 
Nee facundia deseret hunc nee lucidus ordo,' 

he has to take the exact measure of his own powers. How many a poet 
has failed for want of judgment by trespassing on a subject and style for 
which his genius is unfitted ! Again, he is confronted by the most obvious 
difficulties of language and metre, which limit his freedom to a degree 
unknown to the prose-writer. And beyond this, if he wishes to be read — 
and a poem without readers is no more than a musical instrument with- 
out a musician — he has to consider the character of his audience. He 
must have all the instinct of an orator, all the intuitive knowledge of the 
world, as well as all the practical resource, which are required to gain 
command over the hearts of men, and to subdue, by the charms of elo- 
quence, their passions, their prejudices, and their judgment. To achieve 



APPENDIX TO NOTES. 



141 



such results something more is required than ' the spontaneous overflow 
of powerful feeling.' 

" How far Wordsworth's own poetry illustrates his principles we shall 
consider presently ; meantime his definition helps us to understand what 
he meant by Gray's fault of widening the space of separation betwixt 
prose and metrical composition. Neither in respect of the quantity nor 
the quality of his verse could Gray's manner, of composition be described 
as spontaneous. Compared with Wordsworth's numerous volumes of 
poetry, the, slender volume that contains the poetry of Gray looks meagre 
indeed ; yet almost every poem in this small collection is a considered 
work of art. To begin with ' The Bard.' Few readers, we suppose, would 
rise from this ode without a sense of its poetical * effect.' The details may 
be thought to require too much attention ; the allusions, from the nature 
of the subject, are, no doubt, difficult ; but a feeling of loftiness, of har- 
mony, of proportion, remains in the mind at the close of the poem, which 
is not likely to pass away. How, then, was this effect produced ? First 
of all we see that Gray had selected a good subject ; his raw materials, 
so to speak, were poetical. The imagination, unembarrassed by common 
associations, breathes freely in its own region, and is instinctively elevated 
as it moves among the great events of the past, dwelling on the misfor- 
tunes of monarchs, the rise of dynasties, and the splendours of literature. 
But, in the second place, when he has chosen his subject, it is the part of 
the poet to impress the great ideas derived from it on the feelings and 
the memory by the distinctness of the form under which he presents it ; 
and here poetical invention first begins to work. By the imaginative fic- 
tion of * The Bard,' Gray is enabled to cast the whole course of English 
history into the form of a prophecy, and to excite the patriotic feelings of 
the reader, as Virgil roused the pride of his own countrymen by Anchises' 
forecast of the grandeur of Rome. Finally, when the main design of the 
poem is thus conceived, observe with what art all the different parts are 
made to emphasize the beauty of the general conception ; with what dra- 
matic propriety the calamities of the conquering Plantagenet are proph- 
esied by his vanquished foe ; while on the other hand, the literary glories 
of the Tudor Elizabeth awaken the triumph of the patriot and the poet; 
how martial and spirited is the opening of the poem ! how lofty and en- 
thusiastic its close ! Perhaps there is no English lyric which, animated 
by equal fervour, displays so much architectural genius as * The Bard.' 

"Take, again, the 'Ode on the Prospect of Eton College.' A subject 
better adapted for the indulgence of personal feeling, or for those senti- 
mental confidences between the reader and the poet, in which the modern 
muse so much delights, could not be imagined. But what do we find ? 
The theme is treated in the most general manner. Though emphasizing 
the irony of his reflection by the beautiful touch of memory in the second 
stanza, the poet speaks throughout as a moralist or spectator ; from first 
to last he seems to lose all thought of himself in contemplating the trag- 
edies he foresees for others ; the subject is in fact handled with the most 
skilful rhetoric, and every stanza is made to strengthen and elaborate 
the leading thought. In the ' Progress of Poesy,' though the general con- 
structive effect is perhaps inferior to ' The Bard,' we see the same evidence 



142 



APPENDIX TO NOTES. 



of careful preconsideration, while the course of the poem is particularly 
distinguished by the beauty of the transitions. Of the form of the • Elegy ' 
it is superfluous to speak ; a poem so dignified and yet so tender, appeals 
immediately, and will continue to appeal, to the heart of every English- 
man, so long as the care of public liberty and love of the soil maintain 
their hold in this country. In this poem, as indeed in all that Gray ever 
wrote, we find it his first principle to prefer his subject to himself; he never 
forgot that while he was a man he was also an artist, and he knew that 
the function of art was not merely to indulge nature, but to dignify and 
refine it. 

" Yet, in spite of his love of form, there is nothing frigid or statuesque 
in the genius of Gray. A vein of deep melancholy, evidently constitu- 
tional, runs through his poetry, and, considering how little he produced, 
the number of personal allusions in his verses is undoubtedly large. But 
he is entirely free from that egotism which we have had frequent occasion 
to blame as the prevailing vice of modern poetry. For whereas the mod- 
ern poet thrusts his private feelings into prominence, and finds a luxury 
in the confession of his sorrows, Gray's references to himself are intro- 
duced on public grounds, or, in other words, with a view to poetical effect. 
He, like our own bards, is ' condemned to groan,' but for different reasons — 

'The tender for another's pain, 
The unfeeling for his own.' 

" We have already remarked on the public character of the ' Ode on 
Eton College ;' but the second stanza of this poem is a pure expression 
of individual feeling : 

' Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 

Ah, fields belov' d in vain ! 
Where once my careless childhood play'd, 

A stranger yet to pain! 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring.' 

Every one will perceive the art which enforces the truth of the general 
reflections that follow by the personal experience of the speaker. Again, 
the ' Progress of Poesy ' closes with a personal allusion which, as it is a 
climax, might, if ill-managed, have appeared arrogant, but which is, in 
fact, a masterpiece of oratory. After confessing his own inferiority to 
Pindar, the poet proceeds : 

' Yet oft before his infant eyes would run 

Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray, 
With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun; 

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way, 
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, 
Beneath the Good how far— but far above the Great!' 

There is something very noble in the elevated manner in which the self- 
complacent triumph of genius, expressed by so many poets from Ennius 
downwards, is at once justified and chastened by the reflection in these 



APPENDIX TO NOTES. I43 

lines. We see in them that the poet alludes to himself in the third per- 
son, and he repeats this style in the * Elegy,' where, after the fourth line, 
the first personal pronoun is never again used. How just and beautiful 
is the turn where, after contemplating the general lot of the lowly society 
he is celebrating, he proceeds to identify his own fate with theirs : 

' For thee^ who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, 
Dost in these, lines their artless tale relate, 
If, chance, by lonely contemplation led, 
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, 

' Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,' etc. 

" The two great characteristics of Gray's poetry that we have noticed — 
his self-suppression and his sense of form and dignity — are best described 
by the word ' classical.' What we particularly admire in the great authors 
of Greece and Rome is their public spirit. Their writings are full of 
patriotism, good-breeding, and common-sense, and have that happy mix- 
ture of art and nature which is only acquired by men who have learned 
from liberty how to discipline individual instincts by social refinement. 
Their style is masculine, clear, and moderate ; they seem, as it were, never 
to lose the sense of being before an audience, and, like orators who know 
that they are always exposed to the judgment of their intellectual equals, 
they aim at putting intelligible thoughts into the most natural and forcible 
words. Precisely the same qualities are observable in all the best Eng- 
lish writers of the eighteenth century. Addison, Pope, and Goldsmith 
are perhaps the most shining examples, but the rest are 'classical' in the 
sense which we have just indicated ; and we can hardly be wrong in 
ascribing this common rhetorical instinct to the intimate connection be- 
tween the men of thought and the men of action, which existed both in 
the free states of antiquity, and in England under the rule of the aris- 
tocracy. With the advance of the eighteenth century the instinct in 
English literature seems to grow weaker ; the style of our authors be- 
comes more formal and constrained, and symptoms of that dislike of 
society encouraged by the philosophy of Rousseau more frequently betray 
themselves. As the poetry of Cowper shows less social instinct than that 
of Gray, so Gray himself is inferior in this respect to Pope and Goldsmith. 
But his style has the same lofty public spirit that distinguishes his favour- 
ite models, and no worthier form could be imagined to express the ardour 
excited in the heart of a patriotic poet by the rising fortunes of his native 
country. We feel that it is in every way fitting that the author of the 
1 Elegy ' should have been the favourite of Wolfe and the countryman of 
Chatham." 




CLlQ, THE MUSE OF HISTORV- 



INDEX OF WORDS EXPLAINED. 



iEolian, 109. 
afield, 86. 
amain, no. 
antic, in. 
Arvon, 125. 
Attic warbler, 95. 

Berkeley, 126. 

boar (of Richard III.), 130. 

broke (^broken), 86. 

buskined, 132. 

buxom, 104. 

Cadwallo, 125. 
Caernarvon, 125. 
captive (proleptic), 104. 
chance (adverb), 91. 
cheer, 104. 
churchway, 92. 
curfew, 83. 
customed, 92. 
Cytherea, in. 

Delphi, 114. 

fond (=foolish), in, 132. 
fretted, 87. 

glister, 99. 
Gloster, 124. 
Gorgon, 137. 
graved, 93. 



grisly, 105, 126. 
grove (=graved), 93. 

haggard, 124. 
hauberk, 123. 
Helicon, fog. 
Hoel, 124. 
honied, 96. 
Horas, 94. 
Hyperion, 112. 

Idalia, no. 
Ilissus, 114. 

jet, 99. 

leaden (eye), 136. 
lion-port, 132. 
little (=petty), 89. 
Llewellyn, 124. 
long- expecting, 95. 

Maeander, 114. 
margent, 104. 
Modred, 125. 
Mortimer, 124. 
murther, 129. 
murtherous, 10c. 

nightly (=nocturnal\ 123. 

parting (^departing), 83. 



pious (-=pius), 90. 
Plinlimmon, 125. 
provoke i^provocare), 87. 
purple, 95, in, 135. 

rage, 88. 
repair, 132. 
repeat, 113. 
rose (of snow), 130. 
rushy, 96. 

shrggy, 123. 
shell (=lyre), no. 
slow-ccnsuming, 105. 
Snowdon, 123 . 
solemn-breathing, no. 
summer friend, 136. 

tabby, 99. 
Taliessin, 132. 
tempered, no. 
Thracia, no. 
Tyrian, 99. 

upland, 91= 
Urien, 125. 

velvet-green, no. 

woeful-wan, 92. 

ye (accusative), 1*3. 



K 



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An Introduction to the 

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American Literature 

By MILDRED CABELL WATKINS 
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teristics of this work may be stated as follows : 

Due prominence is given to the works of the real makers 
of our American literature. 

All the leading authors are grouped in systematic order 
and classes. 

Living writers, including minor authors, are also given 
their proper share of attention. 

A brief summary is appended to each chapter to aid the 
memory in fixing the salient facts of the narrative. 

Estimates of the character and value of an author's pro- 
ductions are often crystallized in a single phrase, so quaint 
and expressive that it is not easily forgotten by the reader. 

Numerous select extracts from our greatest writers are 
given in their proper connection. 



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FEB 1 7 1904 




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